[nos-bbs] Sending mail to regular addresses via Winlink

[Michael Fox - N6MEF]

Why would you want to take an SMTP client like Thunderbird and have it send to JNOS, which would then send to Winlink, which would then send to the ultimate address?  Why not just point Thunderbird at any regular SMTP server (your own, gmail, etc.) and have it send directly to the recipient address?

Also, what you're suggesting would make JNOS an open relay.  Definitely not a good idea.  Any of your Thunderbird clients could be compromised into effectively making JNOS and Winlink into spam relays, resulting in their being placed on automated blacklists.  I'll bet the Winlink guys won't appreciate that.

Before doing something like that, there would need to be configurable security options on the order of modern mail servers (for example, Postfix) to control which clients will be allowed to relay and which won't, who they can relay to, etc.  It would be easier and far safer to set up a regular mail server than to try to replicate those functions within JNOS.

Michael
N6MEF

> Users of Winlink can send email to standard non-ham internet addresses
> via Winlink. This requires modifying the delivery address. For example,
> if sending to 'name at isp.com', the address has to be changed to
> 'smtp:name at isp.com'. If this address is sent from a regular email
> client, say, Thunderbird, the part 'smtp:name' will be sent as a quoted
> string ("smtp:name") in order to comply with rfc-822 addressing. This is
> correct behaviour. Unfortunately, if this quoted address is delivered to
> JNOS by smtp and sent to a winlink server, the address will not be
> recognized by the server and the message will be dropped. This problem
> comes about because the modified address required by winlink is NOT
> rfc-822 compliant.
> 
> In order to make such an address recognized by the winlink servers, it
> would be necessary to remove the double-quotes from the address. I
> suspect that the JNOS smtp server could do that with minimal
> side-effects, since the only reasonable destination for such an address
> is a winlink server.
> 
>   - Peter K2SPR