*BSD News Article 97370


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From: jimd@slip106.termserv.siu.edu (Jim Dutton)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: POP3 Servers - Best Of Breed?
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 1997 14:45:07 CST
Organization: Southern Illinois University
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Comment: AmigaNOS v2.9p
In-Reply-To: <33999954.7BD4@tundraware.com>
	     (from Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com>)
	     (at Sat, 07 Jun 1997 17:24:36 +0000)
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:42613

Hi Tim, on Jun 07 you wrote:

> I am a long-time FreeBSD site.  I expect to need a POP3 server in the
> next month or so.  Of the various POP3 servers in the ports list, which
> is best by these criteria:
> 
> 1) Rock solid, stable code. Can run 24 hours a day under medium to heavy
>    load (50-75 clients max.)
> 
> 2) Easy to install, easy to administer

We use IPOP3D that comes with the IMAP distribution from the University
of Washington, on campus: 15,000+ mailboxes, somewhere around your max
(concurrent) load. We even added a few source lines to do Kerberos
password validation.

If it all possible, I would suggest an IMAP server + IMAP clients (not
just Pine, though that will work). Too many users get large notes and
their client-end times out. Eudora < V1.5 has no way to adjust for this.
Users also have to wait for ALL of the (new) mail to be downloaded before
they can do anything with it. For only a couple of notes, this won't matter
but for larger volume, especially via dial-up connections, it could matter
a lot. Most of the Web browsers are coming out with IMAP support, though
it may still be beta as of this date. A number of the "major" E-mail
clients are either including IMAP support or are moving towards that
direction. There are several IMAP clients available for all platforms
such as Mail-Drop for Mac's and Sun's Solstice whatever for Windows
(both free).

At any rate, IPOP3D has been stable for over two years, running 24x7,
albeit on an AIX/RS6000 machine.