Re: POP3 protocol question

[[e-mail]]

Verily did Steve Dorner say on October 10, 1994:

>At 6:10 PM 10/10/94, Michael D'Errico wrote:
>>However, the ability to send mail does not belong in POP3.  No debate
>>necessary.  POP3 servers are such different creatures from SMTP servers
>>that I'm surprised anybody who understands both would argue for it.
>
>The reasons people argue for it are varied.  Some of the people doing the
>arguing are people who understand the issues quite well.  On the balance,
>I'm not convinced by them, but there's really no need to get absolutist
>about this.

Sending mail is but a small part of SMTP.  Adding the ability to send
mail to a POP3 server requires adding one more command and execing
sendmail with the proper options to take the mail from the POP client.
Also, adding the ability to send mail via the POP3 server from a
client is also simple.  Much simpler than having to open yet another
connection to yet another server and then doing in effect what you are
doing to send the mail to the POP3 server, but with a more complicated
protocol.

On the other hand, since the XTND XMIT function is not universally
implemented, all good POP client implementations have to know SMTP,
so the only real win is the ease of setting up a POP client where the
server accepts the XTND XMIT function.

Brett McCoy, UNIX Systems Administrator
Computing and Network Services
Kansas State University,  Manhattan KS  66506
vox: [phone] / fax: [phone] / e-mail: [e-mail]