RFC 1426 (rfc1426) - Page 1 of 6
SMTP Service Extension for 8bit-MIMEtransport
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group J. Klensin, WG Chair
Request for Comments: 1426 United Nations University
N. Freed, Editor
Innosoft International, Inc.
M. Rose
Dover Beach Consulting, Inc.
E. Stefferud
Network Management Associates, Inc.
D. Crocker
The Branch Office
February 1993
SMTP Service Extension
for 8bit-MIMEtransport
Status of this Memo
This RFC specifies an IAB standards track protocol for the Internet
community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.
Please refer to the current edition of the "IAB Official Protocol
Standards" for the standardization state and status of this protocol.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
1. Abstract
This memo defines an extension to the SMTP service whereby an SMTP
content body containing octets outside of the US ASCII octet range
(hex 00-7F) may be relayed using SMTP.
2. Introduction
Although SMTP is widely and robustly deployed, various extensions
have been requested by parts of the Internet community. In
particular, a significant portion of the Internet community wishes to
exchange messages in which the content body consists of a MIME
message [3] containing arbitrary octet-aligned material. This memo
uses the mechanism described in [5] to define an extension to the
SMTP service whereby such contents may be exchanged. Note that this
extension does NOT eliminate the possibility of an SMTP server
limiting line length; servers are free to implement this extension
but nevertheless set a line length limit no lower than 1000 octets.
3. Framework for the 8bit MIME Transport Extension
The 8bit MIME transport extension is laid out as follows:
Klensin, Freed, Rose, Stefferud & Crocker
