Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!emory!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!intercon!news
From: kdb@macaw.intercon.com (Kurt Baumann)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  POP protocol
Message-ID: <2770E8EA.876@intercon.com>
Date: 20 Dec 90 16:38:02 GMT
References: <9012191619.AA12643@ftp.com>
Sender: usenet@intercon.com (USENET The Magnificent)
Reply-To: kdb@macaw.intercon.com (Kurt Baumann)
Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation, Herndon, VA
Lines: 32

In article <9012191619.AA12643@ftp.com>, fks@FTP.COM (Frances Selkirk) writes:
> There is nothing in the POP architecture that requires automatic polling.
> Our POP clients check for mail when invoked. Look around for another 
> implementation.

You are assuming that you can not set up Eudora to check only on demand.
I believe you can.  And this does not answer the question asked by the ONW.

What you want probably does not exsist, at least not using a standard TCP/IP
application.  You could just have Eudora or whatever POP client you end up 
with just check when the user wants to see if there is mail.  The assumption 
made with POP is that there is no garuntee that the PC/Mac/Whatever is up 
and running on the network.  I supposed that you could have the server query 
the client and if it doesn't find the client it stops trying to send until 
it is tickled again.  That would be a way to handle what you want.  I am
unaware of any PD software that does what you want (other than something
like MacPost, which, if I am right, uses its own protocol for sending to
the individual Macs, but talks SMTP to the world?).

What someone needs to do is to extend the POP spec to handle this.  It might
be something worthwhile.  Adding the ability to have the server, once tickled,
query the client only when it has mail.

On another note, I estimate that there are about 30 60byte packets that go
out for every client query, that's not a whole lot.

Hope this helps.

--
Kurt Baumann                       InterCon Systems Corporation
703.709.9890                      Creators of fine TCP/IP products
703.709.9896 FAX               for the Macintosh.