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Re: POP3 protocol question

Chris Newman <chrisn+@cmu.edu> Tue, 11 October 1994 17:08 UTC

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From: Chris Newman <chrisn+@cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: POP3 protocol question
To: POP3 IETF Mailing List <ietf-pop3+@andrew.cmu.edu>
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 yjc@po.cwru.edu (Jerome Chan) writes:
> Having the ability to send and
> receive mail from a pop3 server via a dialup line is much simpler then
> trying to send mail via an smtp server and collecting it via a pop3 server.

If you're going over a dialup line, you need error detection with
retransmission.  Once you've added that, putting a "stream number" in
each block header is trivial.

What's complex is putting duplicate functionality in every protocol.
First, POP3 clients will end up having to support _both_ SMTP and XTND
XMIT instead of just SMTP.  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.

		- Chris

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