ietf
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: IMAP v. POP (Was: The utilitiy of IP is at stake here)

2003-06-04 09:44:42
Terry,

TG> and I believe Dave's
TG> assessment is only true for residential ISPs, not enterprises.)

As I suspect Terry knows I know, the differences between pop and imap
are fundamental. I was making no comment on the utility of imap vs. pop.
This is about end-user adoption statistics.

i should have said 'enterprises' rather than LANs, since that was what i
was trying to highlight.  my understanding is that imap has had a large
impact on enterprise email access, though I've no idea what percentage
of the enterprise POP market it has displaced.

but 'residential ISP' is a rather large portion of the Internet and the
scale of the whole Internet is the focus of this discussion.


TG> People who only use one computer (and who back it up regularly :), may
TG> find relatively little benefit to IMAP

this is going to take us down a distracting path, but since you mention
it, i would have switched to IMAP long ago, for exactly the
multi-computer scenario you cite. but i have not come across an email
user agent with features I need that also has support for IMAP that
works acceptably.


TG> Therefore I claim that it is highly incorrect to suggest that IMAP
TG> hasn't displaced POP "because from the end user perspective IMAP
TG> doesn't provide any clear value over POP", or because it was "all
TG> about shifting control of the mail store from the end user into the
TG> hands of the mail administrator" --which I can assure you, it was not.

well, for many users, pop is just fine, of course.  they simply do not
need imap.

it is also true that residential ISPs tend not to see the business
benefit in storing user email.

but it is most clearly true that the two protocols provide massively
different capabilities and that each can be massively useful.

d/
--
 Dave Crocker <mailto:dcrocker(_at_)brandenburg(_dot_)com>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>