Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!indri!unmvax!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!STANFORD.BITNET!GD.WHY
From: GD.WHY@STANFORD.BITNET ("Bill Yundt")
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Mail for Mac and PC Workstations
Message-ID: <Added.wYMsozy00Ui3IFY09N@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 7 May 89 00:24:07 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 56

REPLY TO 05/05/89 03:09 FROM BILLY@VENERA.ISI.EDU "Billy Brackenridge": Mail
for Mac and PC Workstations

In article <CMM.0.88.610155538.billy@venera.isi.edu>, Billy
Brackenridge says:


     Several years ago at ISI.EDU we experimented with
     POP based mail servers on PCs.  A few people still
     use the system, but it never caught on.

We at Stanford  have been trying it with little success
too...only have about 1,000 users or so.

     ....working at a company called IPT Inc.  We make
     a product called uShare which provides AFP based
     services on Unix machines.  .............I decided
     to build our mail system on top of the File Server
     protocol.

I can understand basing a mail system on a shared file
system if you happen to have one and use it everywhere.
Unfortunately, many of our Mac users don't have
file servers.  I am a little confused, though, by the notion
of building a mail system on top of the server "protocol".
That seems to be the opposite of the notion embodied
in international standards which try to separate the
user and transfer agents and keep mail protocols
independent of file architectures.  Mail is, after all,
a message requiring transport, not just a file requiring
indexing and access on a storage medium.

     .......you don't even need to be connected to your
     system.  You could download your input mail queue
     via Kermit take it home on your floppy disk,
     answer your mail and Kermit back the responses

That works with a POP server too...except the canonical
technique is to transfer incoming mail over the network
at high speed while in the office and take it home to
work on it than dump the outbasket back on the net the
next day .... or use SLIP to dial in from home .... it's
even slower than Kermit!!!

I was around in the days when POP was invented too...long
before, actually, and I don't think it is the ideal solution
either....but it is not nearly so unreasonable in 1989 as
Billy makes it out to be.  After all, we load it from a
file server.  They are handy to keep programs on but I
see no reason to generate more network I/O than I need
to read the mail once to my own machine.....which is what
POP does!

Cheers all....Bill Y.

To:  PCIP@TWG.COM, INFO-APPLETALK@ANDREW.CMU.EDU