[wplug] telnet for email

[billings at negate.org]

On Tue, 2003-06-17 at 15:54, John Strange wrote:
> Hmm,
> 
> I'm not sure why you guys go through all the cryptic stuff just to check
> email, when you can pop3s it off and leave the mail on the server till
> you get home.
> 
> Just my .02.
> 
> - John

As a sysadmin who has to deal with users who do this, I have to say how
annoying this is.  Using pop3 as if it were IMAP is not what the
designers of pop3 had in mind.  

On our pop servers, every time you open a pop connection it copies the
spool file to a temporary file, and then opens that file for the pop
session.  

Now imagine people with hundred-megabyte spoolfiles on a maildrop system
with hundreds of users.  Every time it starts a new session (some people
schedule this for every minute) it has to copy this file and parse
through it.  Lots of IO, disk space and headaches.

If you want to leave your mail on the server, use IMAP.

-- 
Jonathan S Billings <billings at negate.org>
TSFNKP