Re: POP3 protocol question

[Steve Dorner <[e-mail]>]

>If you're going over a dialup line, you need error detection with
>retransmission.

MNP and LAP-M are quite adequate.  There are also error-checked streams
that do NOT support TCP, and for whom a single TCP port is by far more
convenient.  While this of course is not *strictly* an Internet issue, it's
a reasonable stretch.

>Second, if you start down the slippery
>slope of agreeing to put SMTP into POP3, next people will ask for FTP,
>GOPHER, etc in POP3 so that MIME's message/external-body can be
>fetched.

I don't really think there is a slope here at all.  You have two basic
needs with mail; sending and receiving.  I think there's a quite clear step
from XTND XMIT to gopher.

I'm not arguing for standardization of XTND XMIT; I'd just rather not hear
bad arguments against it.

>What's complex is putting duplicate functionality in every protocol.

Agreed.

--
Steve Dorner, Qualcomm Incorporated
  Whosoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a
  debt of gratitude we owe to Adam.  He brought death into this world.
                                                                Mark Twain