POP3 vs IMAP

[Dave Howorth]

Does anybody happen to know which of POP3 or IMAP creates the least load
on the mail server?

Cheers, Dave

[Cristian Rodríguez]

Post by Dave Howorth
Does anybody happen to know which of POP3 or IMAP creates the least load
on the mail server?

Current IMAP servers like dovecot are highly optimizated and will do
just fine, for all practical means, consider POP3 as obsolete.

[David C. Rankin]

Post by Cristian Rodríguez
for all practical means, consider POP3 as obsolete

Unless, of course, you want your clients playing the "Now which box did that
e-mail get downloaded to?" game. And you want to endlessly explain the use of
"leave a copy of mail on the server" and why the "delete after ___ days" and
"delete when deleted from trash" flags really do not work.

If that is the objective, then by all means, consider pop3 :p

Seriously, Christian is right, dovecot imap is the way to go...
--
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: [phone]
Facsimile: [phone]
www.rankinlawfirm.com

[Per Jessen]

Post by David C. Rankin

Post by Cristian Rodríguez
for all practical means, consider POP3 as obsolete

Unless, of course, you want your clients playing the "Now which box
did that e-mail get downloaded to?" game. And you want to endlessly
explain the use of "leave a copy of mail on the server" and why the
"delete after ___ days" and "delete when deleted from trash" flags
really do not work.
If that is the objective, then by all means, consider pop3 :p
Seriously, Christian is right, dovecot imap is the way to go...

I agree, unless you'd prefer not to have to deal with the storage issue.

[Dave Howorth]

Post by Per Jessen

Post by David C. Rankin

Post by Cristian Rodríguez
for all practical means, consider POP3 as obsolete

Unless, of course, you want your clients playing the "Now which box
did that e-mail get downloaded to?" game. And you want to endlessly
explain the use of "leave a copy of mail on the server" and why the
"delete after ___ days" and "delete when deleted from trash" flags
really do not work.
If that is the objective, then by all means, consider pop3 :p
Seriously, Christian is right, dovecot imap is the way to go...

I agree, unless you'd prefer not to have to deal with the storage issue.

Thanks for the info and advice everybody. My situation is kind of the
reverse. People here have been experiencing problems with our mail
system but my POP3 connection has been fine. The mail admin wanted me to
change to POP3 and claimed that POP3 used a lot more resources than
IMAP, which struck me as unlikely.

It turns out we are using Dovecot and it has a bug that's been there
since at least 2003 that affects its POP3 performance. There are patches
but apparently his chosen distro vendor (RH :( ) hasn't shipped them for
the release he's using. As a Perl user, I wind him up about RH
occasionally :)

Cheers, Dave

[David C. Rankin]

Post by Dave Howorth

Post by Per Jessen

Post by David C. Rankin

Post by Cristian Rodríguez
for all practical means, consider POP3 as obsolete

Unless, of course, you want your clients playing the "Now which box
did that e-mail get downloaded to?" game. And you want to endlessly
explain the use of "leave a copy of mail on the server" and why the
"delete after ___ days" and "delete when deleted from trash" flags
really do not work.
If that is the objective, then by all means, consider pop3 :p
Seriously, Christian is right, dovecot imap is the way to go...

I agree, unless you'd prefer not to have to deal with the storage issue.

Thanks for the info and advice everybody. My situation is kind of the
reverse. People here have been experiencing problems with our mail
system but my POP3 connection has been fine. The mail admin wanted me to
change to POP3 and claimed that POP3 used a lot more resources than
IMAP, which struck me as unlikely.
It turns out we are using Dovecot and it has a bug that's been there
since at least 2003 that affects its POP3 performance. There are patches
but apparently his chosen distro vendor (RH :( ) hasn't shipped them for
the release he's using. As a Perl user, I wind him up about RH
occasionally :)
Cheers, Dave

Dave,

You may want to just grab the dovecot source. dovecot 2.0.7-1 is current (or
was a couple of days ago). It looks like you can get 2.0.7 rpms for 11.3 at:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/server:/mail/openSUSE_11.3
--
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: [phone]
Facsimile: [phone]
www.rankinlawfirm.com

[Per Jessen]

Post by Dave Howorth
Does anybody happen to know which of POP3 or IMAP creates the least
load on the mail server?

POP3 without a doubt.

[Rodney Baker]

Post by Per Jessen

Post by David C. Rankin

Post by Cristian Rodríguez
for all practical means, consider POP3 as obsolete

Unless, of course, you want your clients playing the "Now which box
did that e-mail get downloaded to?" game. And you want to endlessly
explain the use of "leave a copy of mail on the server" and why the
"delete after ___ days" and "delete when deleted from trash" flags
really do not work.
If that is the objective, then by all means, consider pop3 :p
Seriously, Christian is right, dovecot imap is the way to go...

I agree, unless you'd prefer not to have to deal with the storage issue.

And dovecot supports both POP3 and IMAP iirc, so your clients can choose
either if you choose to allow it.