Pop 3 server timeouts
Hi All
Some of our customers experience problems downloading e-mail from our
POP3 server from a bandwidth constrained 3rd party network.
The trouble is, if they have a mailbox with say 100 messages, they
download say 80 of them then loose their connection. The POP3 session
times out, but all 100 messages remain in their mailbox. At the next
attempt they download the same 80 messages again, often never reaching
the end of the list.
We are using Maildir folders with courier-pop as a pop 3 server.
As I understand it, the POP3 RFC specifies that no mail should be
deleted from the mailbox unless the entire session is completed
successfully. I also recall when we used old fashioned mailboxes, that
one of the popular POP3 servers violated the RFC by allowing individual
messages to be deleted after they had successfully been downloaded.
I know this problem should be managed on the client end. But the client
software (M$ Outlook), the end users and the 3rd party network are
equally inept and so the problem gets referred back to us as the ISP.
Has anybody else faced this problem before?
Can somebody explain the details of the non RFC-compliant "tweak" that
allowed messages to be deleted individually, after they had been
downloaded?
Any ideas how to get courier-pop to behave in this manner?
Alternatively, are there any other stable, proven, POP3 servers that
support Maildir's and also support this "feature"?
Thanks
Ian
--
Ian Forbes ZSD
http://www.zsd.co.za
Office: +27 21 683-1388 Fax: +27 21 674-1106
Snail Mail: P. O. Box 46827, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa
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