Really simple mail transport protocol

• US 20020004820A1
• Filed: 01/26/2001
• Published: 01/10/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 01/28/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: WSOU Investments, LLC (WSOU Holdings, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Lucent Technologies, Inc. (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Lustgarten, Paul C., Kochanski, Gregory P., Baldwin, Michael Scott, Collyer, Geoffrey Allen
• Granted Patent: US 7,103,635 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/212 using filtering or selective blocking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/23 Reliability checks, e.g. acknowledgments or fault reporting

Abstract

A new mail transport protocol is proposed for use over a reliable byte-stream transport. This protocol is faster, simpler and more streaming than prior methods, and handles binary and unicode data more efficiently. The protocol requires fewer communication round trips between servers per message transferred than existing methods. It transmits and receives byte data as is without requiring further per-byte processing on advanced operating systems such as UNIX, and requires only new-line processing in text on legacy operating systems.

Claims

1. A process for the transmission and reception of electronic mail between computer servers over reliable byte-stream transports comprising the steps of:

a transmitter connecting to a receiver,

the receiver sending a greeting to the transmitter,

the transmitter replying the receiver with a greeting and an envelope,

the receiver replying the transmitter with the envelope status,

the transmitter receiving the envelope status and sending a message, and

the receiver receiving the message and replying with the message status.

2. The process of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

the receiver receiving a complete message,

the receiver discarding records of the status of the previous message as being in transit, and

the transmitter sending a new envelope without a greeting to the receiver.

3. The process of claim 1, wherein the transmission and reception of electronic mail is carried over a 8 bit channel.

4. The process of claim 1, wherein the transmission and reception of electronic mail imposes no line-length limits on the messages.

5. The process of claim 1, wherein duplicated messages are suppressed.

6. The process of claim 1, wherein loop detection is implemented.

7. The process of claim 1, wherein Carriage Returns and Line Feeds in a message body is not required.

8. The process of claim 1, wherein the transmission of data between transmitter and receiver is asynchronous.

9. The process of claim 1, wherein if the transmitter detects loss of synchronization with the receiver, the transmitter will drop the connection with the receiver.

10. The process of claim 1, wherein if the receiver detects loss of synchronization with the transmitter, the receiver will drop the connection with the transmitter.

11. The process of claim 1, wherein the message is transmitted and received as raw unconverted data.