I just don't understand what the problem is. WHY do people wish to reduce
the pop connector collection time?
Well, actually, NO, that's not the question. The question is more like 'WHY
do people put so much effort into reducing the pop connector retrieval
interval?'. With maybe a corollary question of 'WHY is it so damned
important?'.
I was dealing with a company for tech support today, the guy emailed me some
notes. As we receive via SMTP no POP connector delay was involved. While I
was on the phone I heard him reading the email, he suggested he was
forwarding it to me and I could hear him typing as he asked me to pause
while I was giving him my email address, he then suggested 'you should get
it soon' so I'm supposing he had actually hit the 'send' button at this
time.
I also called someone else for support yesterday and went through a similar
scenario.
Both emails were simple text messages. One arrived inside the 15 minutes,
the other took 3 hours. One was from Trend Micro, the other was from
Microsoft. This is the nature of internet email. An old quote about internet
email suggests '90% gets delivered inside a few minutes, 5% takes a couple
of days, 5% goes into the big pop box in the sky and no-one knows why.'
I also receive via SMTP at home. If the girl next door emailed me I would
receive it with minimal delay. If she expected me to get off my ass and
knock on her door within 15 minutes she better be offering something better
than dinner to fix her computer.
I just don't understand what the frenzy is.
On the other hand, there are very good reasons why after attempting POP
collection once a short delay should occur before another pop collection is
attempted. Many mail systems (and I'm probably talking *nix here,
particularly *nix mail server farms) 'lock' the mailbox during delivery, if
you attempt to access the mailbox before the lock is released it will error.
The previous POP conversation can be complete but because the server is
handling thousands of requests and also doing it's own housekeeping the
mailbox may still be locked. I'm not sure but I think the lock exists to
eradicate the chance of duplicate delivery.
ie. (if the mailbox lock was not implemented)
popconversation1 'HI, any new mail?'
popconversation1 'Yep, sure is, 1*10MB message'
popconversation1 'give it to me baby'
Transfer starts
popconversation2 'HI, any new mail?'
popconversation2 'Yep, sure is, 1*10MB message'
popconversation2 'give it to me baby'
Transfer starts
some time later more pop conversations get initiated and we've got more
transfers of the same message which eventually may end. The client then has
multiple copies of the same message which transferred slowly because they
all happened at the same time,,, and gets rather confused what to do with
them.
Just my take on the issue. I must be 'in a mood'. IF your users DEMAND
immediate reception of mail tell them the best you can do is a permanent IP
and SMTP delivery, which may result in delays of several minutes to several
days, but won't include an additional 14 minutes and 59 seconds.