Subject-Matter Expertise: Email And Messaging

I consider myself an email and messaging subject matter expert (SME). My expertise spans the medium, protocols, implementation and large scale deployment and administration. I have been involved with evolution of email almost from its beginnings. Below is a brief summary of my email and messaging related experience:

Pre SMTP, UUCP and UUNET Email Node Presence:

In the mid 1980s I recognized the importance and potentials of email and usenet. Equipped with a few 9600 baud modems, I joined Seattle’s UUCP nodes and became a mail forwarder.

When UUNET started functioning as the central hub, I joined it and started to provide both email and usenet services and administered a number of public mailing lists.

On March 20, 1991 I registered “neda.com” (as an example of our early vision, note that Microsoft registered microsoft.com after us – on May 2, 1991). neda.com became a significant email UUCP node in the Pacific North West. A bit later in 1993, I got my own IP address block (198.62.92.0/24) joined the Internet with a fractional T1 and switched from UUCP to SMTP for our email.

X.400 Implementation And RFC-822 Interoperability:

While I was working at Retix (1986-1988), I thoroughly studied the X.400 specifications. At that time and perhaps even now, X.400 was the best source for a formal model of messaging services. During that time, I also implemented (in C on Unix) an X.400 Mail User Agent (MUA) that allowed for use of RFC-822 MUAs on top of X.400.

Internet Email Services White Papers For The Electronic Mail Association (EMA):

I was commissioned by the Electronic Mail Association (EMA) in 1991 to write two papers about Internet email and email attachments.

At the time email was a novelty and many large corporations and the US government were on the X.400 bandwagon. My position then was that the dynamics that were driving usage of email, would converge on Internet email. In PLPC-120022,

Internet E-Mail Services
Prepared For the Electronic Mail Association (EMA) PRMD Operators’s Committee
http://mohsen.banan.1.byname.net/PLPC/120022

I subtly made the case for Internet email and away from X.400.

A sister white paper, PLPC-120023,

Externally Defined Body Parts (Body Part 15):
Issues and Recommendations Related To Security Of Attachments
http://mohsen.banan.1.byname.net/PLPC/120023

deals with problems and risks associated with email attachments. Many of my recommendations, published in 1993, remain valid – more than 25 years later.

Efficient Mail Submission and Delivery (EMSD) – RFC-2524 Protocols Specification:

From 1994 to 1998 I was commissioned by AT&T Wireless to develop a set of highly efficient messaging protocols and systems for use over narrow-band wide-area wireless networks.

This work resulted in publication of two Internet RFCs that I developed.

In February of 1999, the messaging layer protocols were published. The specification is titled:

RFC-2525: Neda’s Efficient Mail Submission and Delivery (EMSD)
Protocol Specification Version 1.3
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2524

EMSD is layered on top of a lower layer protocol which emphasizes efficiency of remote operations. I had designed and developed ESRO which had been published as an Internet RFC in September of 1997:

RFC-2188: AT&T/Neda’s Efficient Short Remote Operations (ESRO)
Protocol Specification Version 1.2
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2188

RFC-2524 Protocols Implementation – Libre Texting:

In parallel with development of these protocols, I was leading a team of 4 software engineers who were assisting me with implementation and verification of reference implementation of these protocols.

The reference implementation included both MUA (client) and the MTA – Mail Transfer Agent – (server) aspects of the protocol. The software was developed as portable C code subject to the open-source Affero GPL license. The entire source code is available as a github organization at: https://github.com/efficientProtocols.

The overwhelming majority of that code base was developed by myself.

Under a commercial license, this code base was sold to Sema Group UK and two other organizations.

IETF Messaging Related Participation:

I have been active in various IETF mailing related groups since early 1990s. Publication of my RFCs involved mastery of IETF/IESG/IAB dynamics. As an example, here is a thread that I led on the public IETF mailing list: https://www.mhonarc.org/archive/html/ietf/2006-03/msg00152.html

My Preferred MTA – qmail:

In the early 2000s, I decided to adopt the qmail model for projects that require MTAs. Design of qmail is very convivial. It allows for creation of an ever expanding messaging ecosystem. Its flexibility and complexity have led to lack of central maintenance and support – which is problematic.

Even then, qmail remains my MTA of choice.

ByName.net Autonomous And Private Mail Software And Services:

Most people use gmail or yahoo or hotmail or comcast or aol or etc for their personal email. By doing so, they loose a great deal of privacy and autonomy. Large corporations then possess their private communications and they become dependent, observed and analyzed.

To address this problem, I have created a series of autonomy and privacy oriented services which include rich messaging services. Collectively these services comprise the ByStar Digital Ecosystem. The primary purpose of ByStar is to preserve the individual’s autonomy and privacy.

One of ByStar’s autonomous services is ByName. ByName’s email capabilities provide for truly private email communications. Consider the personal email address that I use when looking for a new job or a new project. That email address is “job mohsen.1.banan.byname.net”. The domain at the right side of that address truly belongs to me. You too, can have your own first.last.byname.net domain and email addresses!

Messaging Related Patent Expert Witness Activities:

Through out the years, on a number of occasions I have functioned as a patent expert witness for cases dealing with various aspects of email and messaging.

MARMEE:

In 2018 one of my clients had a need for sending out large volumes of emails and tracking their delivery/non-delivery and their final receipt. Something similar to what sendgrid and constant contact do, but a little different.

To address this need, I created a software framework called MARMEE. The documentation for this framework is available at:

Multi Account Resident Mail Exchanger Environment (MARMEE)
Based On X822-MSP (Mail Submission Pipeline)
http://www.by-star.net/PLPC/180051

This software platform is implemented in python. The source code is available at:
https://github.com/bisos-pip/marme.

Marme is also available as a PyPi package at:
https://pypi.org/project/unisos.marme/

You can obtain it with:

pip install unisos.marme

Teaching – Managing Mail Systems Course:

Occasionally I teach a senior level course at Bellevue Collage. It is a 5 credit (quarter) course titled: “Managing Messaging Systems”.

I developed the entire materials and curriculum for that course myself. An outline of the material that I use for that course is available at:
http://mohsen.banan.1.byname.net/teaching/bc-isit442