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IETF RFC 2142
Mailbox Names for Common Services, Roles and Functions
Last modified on Monday, March 2nd, 1998
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Network Working Group D. Crocker
Request for Comments: 2142 Internet Mail Consortium
Category: Standards Track May 1997
MAILBOX NAMES FOR
COMMON SERVICES, ROLES AND FUNCTIONS
 Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Abstract
This specification enumerates and describes Internet mail addresses
(mailbox name @ host reference) to be used when contacting personnel
at an organization. Mailbox names are provided for both operations
and business functions. Additional mailbox names and aliases are not
prohibited, but organizations which support email exchanges with the
Internet are encouraged to support AT LEAST each mailbox name for
which the associated function exists within the organization.
1. RATIONALE AND SCOPE
Various Internet documents have specified mailbox names to be used
when reaching the operators of the new service; for example, [RFC 822
6.3, C.6] requires the presence of a <POSTMASTER@domain> mailbox name
on all hosts that have an SMTP server. Other protocols have defacto
standards for well known mailbox names, such as <USENET@domain> for
NNTP (see [RFC 977]), and <WEBMASTER@domain> for HTTP (see [HTTP]).
Defacto standards also exist for well known mailbox names which have
nothing to do with a particular protocol, e.g., <ABUSE@domain> and
<TROUBLE@domain>.
The purpose of this memo is to aggregate and specify the basic set of
mailbox names which organizations need to support. Most
organizations do not need to support the full set of mailbox names
defined here, since not every organization will implement the all of
the associated services. However, if a given service is offerred,
then the associated mailbox name(es) must be supported, resulting in
delivery to a recipient appropriate for the referenced service or
role.
Crocker Standards Track PAGE 1 
RFC 2142 Mailbox Names May 1997
If a host is not configured to accept mail directly, but it
implements a service for which this specification defines a mailbox
name, that host must have an MX RR set (see [RFC 974]) and the mail
exchangers specified by this RR set must recognize the referenced
host's domain name as "local" for the purpose of accepting mail bound
for the defined mailbox name. Note that this is true even if the
advertised domain name is not the same as the host's domain name; for
example, if an NNTP server's host name is DATA.RAMONA.VIX.COM yet it
advertises the domain name VIX.COM in its "Path:" headers, then mail
must be deliverable to both <USENET@VIX.COM> and
<USENET@DATA.RAMONA.VIX.COM>, even though these addresses might be
delivered to different final destinations.
The scope of a well known mailbox name is its domain name. Servers
accepting mail on behalf of a domain must accept and correctly
process mailbox names for that domain, even if the server, itself,
does not support the associated service. So, for example, if an NNTP
server advertises the organization's top level domain in "Path:"
headers (see [RFC 977]) the mail exchangers for that top level domain
must accept mail to <USENET@domain> even if the mail exchanger hosts
do not, themselves, serve the NNTP protocol.
2. INVARIANTS
For well known names that are not related to specific protocols, only
the organization's top level domain name are required to be valid.
For example, if an Internet service provider's domain name is
COMPANY.COM, then the <ABUSE@COMPANY.COM> address must be valid and
supported, even though the customers whose activity generates
complaints use hosts with more specific domain names like
SHELL1.COMPANY.COM. Note, however, that it is valid and encouraged
to support mailbox names for sub-domains, as appropriate.
Mailbox names must be recognized independent of character case. For
example, POSTMASTER, postmaster, Postmaster, PostMaster, and even
PoStMaStEr are to be treated the same, with delivery to the same
mailbox.
Implementations of these well known names need to take account of the
expectations of the senders who will use them. Sending back an
automatic mail acknowledgement is usually helpful (though we suggest
caution against the possibility of "duelling mail robots" and the
resulting mail loops).
Crocker Standards Track PAGE 2
RFC 2142 Mailbox Names May 1997
3. BUSINESS-RELATED MAILBOX NAMES
These names are related to an organization's line-of-business
activities. The INFO name is often tied to an autoresponder, with a
range of standard files available.
MAILBOX AREA USAGE
----------- ---------------- ---------------------------
INFO Marketing Packaged information about the
organization, products, and/or
services, as appropriate
MARKETING Marketing Product marketing and
marketing communications
SALES Sales Product purchase information
SUPPORT Customer Service Problems with product or
service
4. NETWORK OPERATIONS MAILBOX NAMES
Operations addresses are intended to provide recourse for customers,
providers and others who are experiencing difficulties with the
organization's Internet service.
MAILBOX AREA USAGE
----------- ---------------- ---------------------------
ABUSE Customer Relations Inappropriate public behaviour
NOC Network Operations Network infrastructure
SECURITY Network Security Security bulletins or queries
5. SUPPORT MAILBOX NAMES FOR SPECIFIC INTERNET SERVICES
For major Internet protocol services, there is a mailbox defined for
receiving queries and reports. (Synonyms are included, here, due to
their extensive installed base.)
MAILBOX SERVICE SPECIFICATIONS
----------- ---------------- ---------------------------
POSTMASTER SMTP [RFC 821], [RFC 822]
HOSTMASTER DNS [RFC 1033-RFC 1035]
USENET NNTP [RFC 977]
NEWS NNTP Synonym for USENET
WEBMASTER HTTP [RFC 2068]
WWW HTTP Synonym for WEBMASTER
UUCP UUCP [RFC 976]
FTP FTP [RFC 959]
Crocker Standards Track PAGE 3
RFC 2142 Mailbox Names May 1997
6. MAILING LIST ADMINISTRATION MAILBOX
Mailing lists have an administrative mailbox name to which add/drop
requests and other meta-queries can be sent.
For a mailing list whose submission mailbox name is:
<LIST@DOMAIN>
there MUST be the administrative mailbox name:
<LIST-REQUEST@DOMAIN>
Distribution List management software, such as MajorDomo and
Listserv, also have a single mailbox name associated with the
software on that system -- usually the name of the software -- rather
than a particular list on that system. Use of such mailbox names
requires participants to know the type of list software employed at
the site. This is problematic. Consequently:
LIST-SPECIFIC (-REQUEST) MAILBOX NAMES ARE REQUIRED,
INDEPENDENT OF THE AVAILABILITY OF GENERIC LIST SOFTWARE
MAILBOX NAMES.
7. DOMAIN NAME SERVICE ADMINISTRATION MAILBOX
In DNS (see [RFC 1033], [RFC 1034] and [RFC 1035]), the Start Of
Authority record (SOA RR) has a field for specifying the mailbox name
of the zone's administrator.
This field must be a simple word without metacharacters (such as "%"
or "!" or "::"), and a mail alias should be used on the relevant mail
exchanger hosts to direct zone administration mail to the appropriate
mailbox.
For simplicity and regularity, it is strongly recommended that the
well known mailbox name HOSTMASTER always be used
<HOSTMASTER@domain>.
Crocker Standards Track PAGE 4
RFC 2142 Mailbox Names May 1997
8. AUTONOMOUS SYSTEM MAILBOX
Several Internet registries implement mailing lists for Autonomous
System contacts. So, for example, mail sent to <AS3557@RA.NET> will
at the time of this writing reach the technical contact for
Autonomous System 3557 in the BGP4 (see [RFC 1654], [RFC 1655] and
[RFC 1656]).
Not all Autonomous Systems are registered with all registries,
however, and so undeliverable mailbox names under this scheme should
be treated as an inconvenience rather than as an error or a standards
violation.
9. SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
Denial of service attacks (flooding a mailbox with junk) will be
easier after this document becomes a standard, since more systems
will support the same set of mailbox names.
10. REFERENCES
[RFC 821] Postel, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", STD 10, RFC
821, Information Sciences Institute, August 1982.
[RFC 822] Crocker, D., "Standard for the format of ARPA Internet text
messages", STD 11, RFC 822, University of Delaware, August 1982.
[RFC 959] Postel, J., and J. Reynolds, "File Transfer Protocol (FTP)",
STD 9, RFC 959, Information Sciences Institute, October 1985.
[RFC 974] Partridge, C., "Mail routing and the domain system", STD 14,
RFC 974, CSNET CIC BBN Laboratories Inc, January 1986.
[RFC 976] Horton, M., "UUCP mail interchange format standard", RFC
976, Bell Laboratories, February 1986.
[RFC 977] Kantor, B., et al, "Network News Transfer Protocol: A
Proposed Standard for the Stream-Based Transmission of News", RFC
977, University of California, February 1986.
[RFC 1033] Lottor, M., "Domain administrators operations guide", RFC
1033, SRI International, November 1987.
[RFC 1034] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
STD 13, RFC 1035, USC/Information Sciences Institute, November 1987.
Crocker Standards Track PAGE 5
RFC 2142 Mailbox Names May 1997
[RFC 1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain Names - Implementation and
Specification" STD 13, RFC 1035, USC/Information Sciences Institute,
November 1987.
[RFC 1654] Rekhter, Y., et al, "A Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP- 4)",
RFC 1654, T.J. Watson Research Center, IBM Corp., July 1994.
[RFC 1655] Rekhter, Y., et al, "Application of the Border Gateway
Protocol in the Internet", RFC 1655, T.J. Watson Research Center, IBM
Corp., July 1994.
[RFC 1656] Traina, P., "BGP-4 Protocol Document Roadmap and
Implementation Experience", RFC 1656, cisco Systems, July 1994.
[HTTP] Berners-Lee, T., et al, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol --
HTTP/1.0", RFC 1945, May 1996.
11. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This specification derived from an earlier draft written by Paul
Vixie. Thanks to Stan Barber, Michael Dillon, James Aldridge, J. D.
Falk, Peter Kaminski, Brett Watson, Russ Wright, Neal McBurnett, and
Ed Morin for their comments on that draft.
12. AUTHOR'S ADDRESS
Dave Crocker
Internet Mail Consortium
127 Segre Ave.
Santa Cruz, CA
Phone: +1 408 246 8253
EMail: dcrocker@imc.org
Crocker Standards Track PAGE 6
Mailbox Names for Common Services, Roles and Functions
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 12195 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Monday, March 2nd, 1998
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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