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, [RFC822
 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 [RFC977]), 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.
 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 [RFC974]) 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 [RFC977]) 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).
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 [RFC821], [RFC822]
 HOSTMASTER DNS [RFC1033-RFC1035]
 USENET NNTP [RFC977]
 NEWS NNTP Synonym for USENET
 WEBMASTER HTTP [RFC 2068]
 WWW HTTP Synonym for WEBMASTER
 UUCP UUCP [RFC976]
 FTP FTP [RFC959]
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 [RFC1033], [RFC1034] and [RFC1035]), 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>.
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 [RFC1654], [RFC1655] and
 [RFC1656]).
 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
 [RFC821] Postel, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", STD 10, RFC
 821, Information Sciences Institute, August 1982.
 [RFC822] Crocker, D., "Standard for the format of ARPA Internet text
 messages", STD 11, RFC 822, University of Delaware, August 1982.
 [RFC959] Postel, J., and J. Reynolds, "File Transfer Protocol (FTP)",
 STD 9, RFC 959, Information Sciences Institute, October 1985.
 [RFC974] Partridge, C., "Mail routing and the domain system", STD 14,
 RFC 974, CSNET CIC BBN Laboratories Inc, January 1986.
 [RFC976] Horton, M., "UUCP mail interchange format standard", RFC
 976, Bell Laboratories, February 1986.
 [RFC977] 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.
 [RFC1033] Lottor, M., "Domain administrators operations guide", RFC
 1033, SRI International, November 1987.
 [RFC1034] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
 STD 13, RFC 1035, USC/Information Sciences Institute, November 1987.
 [RFC1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain Names - Implementation and
 Specification" STD 13, RFC 1035, USC/Information Sciences Institute,
 November 1987.
 [RFC1654] Rekhter, Y., et al, "A Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP- 4)",
 RFC 1654, T.J. Watson Research Center, IBM Corp., July 1994.
 [RFC1655] Rekhter, Y., et al, "Application of the Border Gateway
 Protocol in the Internet", RFC 1655, T.J. Watson Research Center, IBM
 Corp., July 1994.
 [RFC1656] 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