In the sender-push model, the sender knows the identity of a receiver in advance and pushes the message in an asynchronous manner to the receiver. The receiver accepts the entire message, may choose to optionally examine the message, and then accept or discard it. An important aspect of sender-push model is that the entire message is received before any receiver-side processing is performed. A number of communication services in the Internet rely on the sender-push model. A prime example is email in which the sender relies on the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to push an entire email message to a passive receiver. Asynchronous voice messages over the telephone network (both traditional and IP based) represent another important application of the sender-push model.
A common variant of the sender-push concept is the receiver-intent-based sender-push (RISP) model. The most common examples of the RISP model are the subscription-based services such as mailing lists, where user subscribes to a service which subsequently pushes the data to the receiver. Other popular subscription-based applications of the RISP model include stock and news ticker applications and automatic software updates. Similarly, Instant Messaging is another application where the message itself is pushed by the sender, but the receiver can allow or disallow messages from specific users.
A common feature among all the above examples is that the content itself is pushed to the receiver, whereas the receiver may optionally provide minimal control feedback to the sender. The primary advantage of the sender-push model is that its asynchronous message delivery framework is conceptually simple and fits naturally for many useful applications such as email, text, and voice messaging. Sender initiates message transfer when the message is ready, the receiver simply waits passively for any message to arrive and accepts one when it does arrive. Furthermore, there is no significant storage requirement on the sender side.
The biggest disadvantage of the sender-push model is that it is the sender who completely controls what message is delivered and when it is delivered. The receiver has neither the knowledge of what message he/she will receive, nor when the message will be received. The receiver is ideally expected to receive the entire message before processing or discarding it. Apart from generating and transmitting the message, the sender does not commit any resources for the transmitted message. On the other hand, the receiver has to wait, receive, process and store (or discard) the message even if the message is not of interest to the receiver.
The RISP model alleviates this concern to some extent by allowing receivers to provide control feedback. However it is not easy to implement in many popular applications. For example, adopting the RISP model for email, mobile text and voice messages requires the receiver to maintain an exhaustive white-list or black-list of email addresses and phone numbers of potential senders. Indeed, approaches such as Reverse Black Lists (RBL) [12] adopt this philosophy in trying to blacklist email spammers. However most potential correspondents, such as first time senders, fall in neither of the two categories. To handle such unclassified cases, receivers end up relying on content-based-filters, i.e. they receive the entire message, scan it to determine if it is wanted and then either accept or discard it. The fundamental problem here lies in having to accept and examine the entire message before culling it.
An additional disadvantage of the sender-push model is that the sender can vanish (go offline) immediately after pushing unwanted content to the receiver. This makes it quick and easy for a malicious sender to hide its identity. Once the receiver accepts the content, it is difficult at best to trace back a malicious sender.
In summary, while the sender-push model is both simple and convenient, it comes with a serious baggage, namely, that senders control what to send and when to send, and cannot be easily held accountable for sending unwanted content to receivers.
