Why imap4 protocol is used

In this post, I am going to talk about the 10 computer networking concepts that every professional should master. I will also include links to the main articles of each concept. It implements the offline mail access model, which means that the mails are retrieved from the mail server on the local machine, and then deleted from the mail server.

Nowadays, millions of users use the POP3 protocol to access the incoming mails. Due to the offline mail access model, it cannot be used as much. The online model we would prefer in the ideal world.

In the online model, we need to be connected to the internet always. The biggest problem with the offline access using POP3 is that the mails are permanently removed from the server, so multiple computers cannot access the mails. The solution to this problem is to store the mails at the remote server rather than on the local server.

The POP3 also faces another issue, i. The solution to this problem is to use the disconnected access model, which provides the benefits of both online and offline access. In the disconnected access model, the user can retrieve the mail for local use as in the POP3 protocol, and the user does not need to be connected to the internet continuously. However, the changes made to the mailboxes are synchronized between the client and the server. The mail remains on the server so different applications in the future can access it.

When developers recognized these benefits, they made some attempts to implement the disconnected access model. This is implemented by using the POP3 commands that provide the option to leave the mails on the server. This works, but only to a limited extent, for example, keeping track of which messages are new or old become an issue when both are retrieved and left on the server.

So, the POP3 lacks some features which are required for the proper disconnected access model. In the mids, the development began at Stanford University on a new protocol that would provide a more capable way of accessing the user mailboxes.

The result was the development of the interactive mail access protocol, which was later renamed as Internet Message Access Protocol. It was updated in RFC , August , retaining the same version. So they created a new document of version 3 known as IMAP3. In RFC , which was published in February Register for Webinar.

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