Subject: Re: IMAP is a failure?

From: [email-masked] (Jason Haar)
Date: 1 Aug 1994 08:50:30 GMT

Terry Gray ([email-masked]) wrote:

: Within its design center, IMAP offers technical advantages over all the 
: others.  In comparison to POP, I'll just mention the following:

:  o Access to a mail store from multiple computers.
:  o Ability to selectively fetch individual MIME body parts.
:  o Ability to access multiple remote folders, not just INBOX.
:  o Ability to support disconnected operation.

This cannot be touted enough. This is where IMAP really kills POP.

Try reading a 2-Meg MIME messages over a 9k6 SLIP link with POP - can you 
say SLOW??? I knew you could ;-)

Try reading a 2-Meg MIME message over IMAP - where you read the 10-line 
text part, and decide to leave the PostScript attachment on the server 
until you get back to the LAN. Can you say FAST?

I still think all other work on IMAP should be stopped until the 
coffee-interface is finished...

 --

Cheers,

Jason
+------------------------------+------------------------------------------+
| Jason Haar, European SysAdmin   Phone: + 44 (256) 790111                |
| Motorola Cellular Subscriber      Fax: + 44 (256) 790519                |
| Basingstoke, Hampshire                                                  |
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From: "Steven D. Majewski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 1994 18:33:06 -0400

On Aug 2, 21:03, "John M. Wobus" wrote:
> 
> But IMAP doesn't do that.  Who uses it as a simple POP replacement?  Is
> anyone defining a POP-equivalent subnet?  IMAP Lite?  If you want to replace
> your POP with functionally equivalent IMAP, you get to run the more complex
> server and leave your server open to the kinds of server-resource-draining
> behavior that IMAP was designed for.
> 
> IMAP is great.  But if you are aiming to limit your server resources
> by offering only POP-style usage, then IMAP server and client software is
> not ready for prime time.
> 

I was about to cast by vote whole heartedly for IMAP over POP, but
John Wobus' comments above, remind me to add the caveat that IMAP
is better than POP as long as it makes sense for you to shift
resource usage onto the server, with the advantage of reducing 
load on the client and on the network bandwidth. 

These conditions fit for people like Bill Yeager who are interested
in mobile & disconnected use, and people who get hundreds of messages
a day and don't want to download them all to find the one they need, 
but there may be a number of cases where server load  is the more
important limiting factor. In that case, then yes - POP makes more 
sense. 

- Steve Majewski       (804-982-0831)      <[email-masked]>
- UVA Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics