emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (07/27/90)
In article <270@nih-csl.nih.gov> tpersky@suntory.dcrt.nih.gov (Ted Persky) writes:
Would anyone know which of the many mail packages out there
implement the Post Office Protocol, POP?
This is easily one of the most frequently asked questions on these
groups. You should rummage through the comp.archives archives
(kept on cs.toronto.edu) for some recent announcements.
I'd like to see a newsgroup at some point to cover IMAP, POP, and
related protocols.
--Ed
Edward Vielmetti, U of Michigan math dept <emv@math.lsa.umich.edu>
comp.archives moderatorjbvb@VAX.FTP.COM (James B. Van Bokkelen) (07/27/90)
Apropos of this, I am currently trying to: 1) Locate commercially supported PCMAIL, POP or IMAP servers (I know of IBM's and Sun's, both intended for use with the vendor's DOS POP2 client, and the source-form POP server supplied by InterCon) 2) Jawbone big-system vendors into supporting servers for PCMAIL (two supported OS/2 clients, a DOS due in a short while) or either version of POP (several supported OS/2 and DOS clients, but I think they're all POP2). If you know of vendors I don't, send me e-mail. I'll summarize. If you are a potential server vendor/supporter, you're welcome to get in touch as well. James B. VanBokkelen 26 Princess St., Wakefield, MA 01880 FTP Software Inc. voice: (617) 246-0900 fax: (617) 246-0901
BIWINE@VAXSAR.VASSAR.EDU (Bill Wine) (12/19/90)
We are interested in implementing a campus-wide e-mail system to link about 300 Macs and PC's to an smtp host. (Currently users log in to check their mail.) We would like to use pd software to reduce costs, so we obtained a POP3 server and Eudora client software. The system seems to work very well, (with 3 concurrent users) and we especially like the Eudora user interface. Our concern is that the POP architecture may not be sutiable for a large mail system. It seems inefficient for the POP client to check for newmail every 5 or 10 minutes. This would put a heavy load on the host with 300 clients. It seems to me that a better idea would be for a client to log in once, and for the server to check for newmail periodically, then send it to the client. Commercial systems such as QuickMail work this way, using a dedicated Mac as a server. One pd system that uses this architecture is MacPost from Lund University. We have just begun testing it. One drawback is that the user interface is not as nice as Eudora. Would anyone care to share their experiences with large Mac or PC e-mail systems (100+ concurrent users). Is the POP architecture suitable for large systems? Is there a better one? Thanks for your help. Bill Wine biwine@vassar.edu cc: macnet-l@yalevm.bitnet cc: tcp-ip@nic.ddn.mil
fks@FTP.COM (Frances Selkirk) (12/20/90)
There is nothing in the POP architecture that requires automatic polling. Our POP clients check for mail when invoked. Look around for another implementation. Frances Kirk Selkirk info@ftp.com (617) 246-0900 FTP Software, Inc. 26 Princess Street, Wakefield, MA 01880
kdb@macaw.intercon.com (Kurt Baumann) (12/21/90)
In article <9012191619.AA12643@ftp.com>, fks@FTP.COM (Frances Selkirk) writes: > There is nothing in the POP architecture that requires automatic polling. > Our POP clients check for mail when invoked. Look around for another > implementation. You are assuming that you can not set up Eudora to check only on demand. I believe you can. And this does not answer the question asked by the ONW. What you want probably does not exsist, at least not using a standard TCP/IP application. You could just have Eudora or whatever POP client you end up with just check when the user wants to see if there is mail. The assumption made with POP is that there is no garuntee that the PC/Mac/Whatever is up and running on the network. I supposed that you could have the server query the client and if it doesn't find the client it stops trying to send until it is tickled again. That would be a way to handle what you want. I am unaware of any PD software that does what you want (other than something like MacPost, which, if I am right, uses its own protocol for sending to the individual Macs, but talks SMTP to the world?). What someone needs to do is to extend the POP spec to handle this. It might be something worthwhile. Adding the ability to have the server, once tickled, query the client only when it has mail. On another note, I estimate that there are about 30 60byte packets that go out for every client query, that's not a whole lot. Hope this helps. -- Kurt Baumann InterCon Systems Corporation 703.709.9890 Creators of fine TCP/IP products 703.709.9896 FAX for the Macintosh.
BIWINE@VAXSAR.VASSAR.EDU (Bill Wine) (12/22/90)
>I have seen references to Eudora a couple times here. Can anyone tell >me where to find it? We're looking for something to do what Eudora >apparently does so I'd like to try it. I was told it was on >ux1.cso.uiuc.edu but I couldn't find it there. Maybe I wasn't looking >for the correct file name. Any help will be appreciated. It's there, under mac/eudora. Bill
mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) (01/03/91)
In article <E9633327E93FE1EE45@vaxsar.bitnet> BIWINE@VAXSAR.VASSAR.EDU (Bill Wine) writes: >Our concern is that the POP architecture >may not be sutiable for a large mail system. It seems inefficient for >the POP client to check for newmail every 5 or 10 minutes. >It seems to me that a >better idea would be for a client to log in once, and for the server >to check for newmail periodically, then send it to the client. There is no way that I am aware of in either the POP2 or the POP3 protocol for a client to check for new mail; the only way is to close the POP connection and open a new one. There are some auxillary protocols to "check for new mail", some of which I believe are UDP based. >Would anyone care to share their experiences with large Mac or PC >e-mail systems (100+ concurrent users). Is the POP architecture >suitable for large systems? Is there a better one? An alternative to the POP protocols is the IMAP protocol (RFC-1176). IMAP provides both an explicit "check for new mail" and server- controlled new mail notification. You can get a distribution package on FTPHOST.CAC.WASHINGTON.EDU (IP address 128.95.112.1) as imap/imap.tar.Z via anonymous FTP. Stanford has written a Mac client. I wrote a NeXT and generic Unix client; I'm working on a PC client for IMAP now. The IMAP distribution also includes a POP2 and POP3 server so you can leverage on your existing POP software without incompatibilities (the underlying mail access library is the same in all cases); the POP servers can also be IMAP clients so any POP clients can access IMAP servers. Whether you choose IMAP or POP depends a lot upon what you are trying to do. They are often mistakenly thought of as competing protocols, but really have different functionalities. POP is for downloading an RFC-822 format mailbox to a client, whereas IMAP is for a client to manage and retrieve data on a remote mailbox maintained on a server. _____ | ____ ___|___ /__ Mark ("Gaijin") Crispin "Gaijin! Gaijin!" _|_|_ -|- || __|__ / / R90/6 pilot, DoD #0105 "Gaijin ha doko?" |_|_|_| |\-++- |===| / / Atheist & Proud "Niichan ha gaijin." --|-- /| |||| |___| /\ (206) 842-2385/543-5762 "Chigau. Omae ha gaijin." /|\ | |/\| _______ / \ FAX: (206) 543-3909 "Iie, boku ha nihonjin." / | \ | |__| / \ / \MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU "Souka. Yappari gaijin!" Hee, dakedo UNIX nanka wo tsukatte, umaku ikanaku temo shiranai yo.