Subject: IMAP connection time

From: Clifford Wesley Fulford 91705162 <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 16:13:10 +0100 (BST)

An IMAP server has recently been setup on the Universities central
VAX VMS system. I have changed the pine configuration on our unix
boxes to do additional mail collections from
	LABEL {host}inbox
It works fine except the connection time is unacceptably long (32seconds
- 7 minutes). Telnet connections by comparison take under 1 second
so I don't think I can blame the network.

We dont use IMAP on the UNIX subnet so I've nothing to compare this too.

Does anyone know what the problem is and how to cure it.
Clifford W Fulford
UNIX development
University of North London
e-mail [email-masked]

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From: Portia Shao <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 11:15:07 -0700 (PDT)

> VAX VMS system. I have changed the pine configuration on our unix

whose IMAP server is being used on the VMS system? can you find out if it 
is PMDF? if it not, then what I say here may not apply.
(you can try telnet to port 143 of the server and see if the banner 
contain the word PMDF)

there are several reasons why the connection may take a while to 
establish, 

the CPU power of the system, is it a slow system? is it an Alpha or a VAX 
780? makes a big difference. How many users are usually on the system can 
also have some effect.

if CPU is not the problem, how many messages you have in the folder to be 
opened, do you have hundreds or thousands or just a few dozen? it would 
take a longer time to open a larger folder (or folder with big messages).

how much memory is on the system, is the system short on memory? messages 
are read into memory by the imap server.

disk speed, is your mail file residing on a fast disk or a slow disk or 
is the disk fragmented?

is the server configured to have a small or large working set?

> so I don't think I can blame the network.

7 minutes seem like a very unresonable time unless you have some really 
huge folders. It took me 21 seconds to open a folder with 1382 messages, 
some of them very large, on a moderately busy VAXstation 4000/90.

> e-mail [email-masked]

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---

From: "John R. Violette" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 09:58:01 -0400 (EDT)

> boxes to do additional mail collections from

Use LABEL {host:143}inbox. By default, Pine uses rsh to try to login to 
the IMAP server and if it can't get in it will then prompt for username 
and password.  The delay is probably because your IMAP server doesn't 
have rsh enabled due to security, and it is timing out after about 30 
seconds.  I had the same problem and couldn't find host:port documented. 
143 is the socket the the IMAP server listens on.  Specifying this tells 
it to connect directly to the socket without trying to use rsh first.
 
> e-mail [email-masked]

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