ietf-smtp
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Re: Internet Draft for flexible proxying of the mail protocols

2000-09-28 15:26:19
Lee Thompson <lt(_at_)seattlelab(_dot_)com> writes:

I wouldn't say POP3 is dying.  At least not from where I sit.  Most ISPs
appear to not want to be message stores for people either.  (Large
corporations and Universities, I'm sure, love IMAP.)

We much prefer POP from the server side.  The protocol is far simpler
(after having had to implement a very small portion of the IMAP protocol
once, I'm rather afraid of it; I think it's one of the most complicated
and difficult protocols that I've seen), the clients are far more reliable
(we rarely see oddities with POP clients, but IMAP clients routinely do
all sorts of strange things), and a POP server is much lighter weight on
the server side and can handle significantly more users.

Of course, the users understandably want the features of IMAP so we're
getting pushed in that direction, but there will definitely be a price
corresponding to much higher server resources and administrative time
needed over POP.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra(_at_)stanford(_dot_)edu)             
<http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>