Subject: The "pop-server" and "smtp-server" options

From: Arni Ingimundarson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 21:59:01 +0100

Hello.

I apologize if I am posting to the wrong forum.

How can I make use of these options?

Are there any e-mail programs that speak DHCP or does the OS have to support
these options and pass them on to the e-mail clients?

Regards,
Arni

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From: Stuart Cheshire <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 10:18:02 -0800

> these options and pass them on to the e-mail clients?

Mac OS 9.1 (out soon) requests the SMTP Server option from the DHCP server,
so that a mail client application can use the call below to read the value
of the SMTP Server option (option code 69):

    OTInetGetDHCPConfigInfo(buffer, size, kDefaultInetInterface, 69);

Mac OS does not request the POP Server option. We felt that the SMTP relay
is dynamic information that may change from network to network, but your POP
mailbox is not.

The reasoning for this is that if a mobile user visits another network but
still tries to send mail via their regular "home" SMTP relay, it will most
likely reject mail coming from an "unknown" source address as potential
spam. Thus the SMTP relay you should use may change depending on which
network you're attached to (and which source IP address you're sending
from), and consequently it makes sense to get this information from the DHCP
server on each network.

In contrast, the POP server where your mailbox is stored remains the same no
matter where you connect to the Internet. Just because you're at the IETF
meeting doesn't mean that your mail is now all stored on the IETF POP
server. Your mail is still stored where it has always been stored -- on your
regular POP server -- and your mail client needs to continue to get it from
that server.

Stuart Cheshire <[email-masked]>