Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 13:36:25 -0800 (PST) From: "Jonathan M. Bresler" <jmb> To: freebsd-chat Subject: Protocol Action: Post Office Protocol - Version 3 to Standard (fwd) Message-ID: <199602272136.NAA06740@freefall.freebsd.org>
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The IESG wrote: >From ietf-announce-request@IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US Tue Feb 27 13:32:03 1996 To: IETF-Announce:; Cc: RFC Editor <rfc-editor@isi.edu> Cc: Internet Architecture Board <iab@isi.edu> Sender: ietf-announce-request@IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US From: The IESG <iesg-secretary@CNRI.Reston.VA.US> Subject: Protocol Action: Post Office Protocol - Version 3 to Standard Date: Tue, 27 Feb 96 15:07:06 -0500 X-Orig-Sender: scoya@CNRI.Reston.VA.US Message-ID: <9602271507.aa29813@IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US> The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft Post Office Protocol - Version 3 <draft-myers-pop-pop3-07.txt> as a Standard. This document is a revision of RFC1725, currently a Draft Standard Protocol. The IESG contact person is John Klensin. Technical Summary POP3 is the Internet's most widely used protocol for remote access to a mail. It specifies a dialogue between a client and a "post office" maildrop server to retrieve mail messages that have been delivered to that maildrop (in the Internet context, that delivery usually occurs via SMTP). Working Group Summary The last few versions of the POP3 specification have been developed by ad hoc efforts involving people who have made significant contributions to the protocol or who have made significant and widely-deployed implementations of it. The current document reflects considerable operational experience; the protocol itself is unchanged from the previous versions. There was no unresolved dissent among the developers and private reviewers, and no comments were received during Last Call other than those advocating immediate standardization of the protocol. Protocol Quality There are at least two POP3 server implementations that are free and may be considered to be reference implementations, multiple implementations on different UNIX hardware platforms (and flavors of UNIX), at least one OpenVMS implementation, and at least one known implementations on Windows NT. POP3 client implementations are available, and in heavy use, on Macintosh, UNIX, MS-DOS, and Windows (3.1, 95, and NT) environments. Almost every consumer-oriented "buy this package and get yourself on the Internet" kit that actually runs over a TCP/IP stack contains a POP3 client. All of these implementations of clients appear to interoperate with all implementations of servers. The only exceptions arise when particular clients insist on server support for certain optional features of the protocol in order to communicate with them, or when a server is configured to disable specific features (these cases are discussed in the specification). In any event, those exceptions are not problematic as they would be in a more typical "arbitrary client communicates with an arbitrary server" protocol: since the user must make prior arrangements to utilize a particular maildrop on a particular system, the use of POP3 has most of the usual properties of a "consenting adult" arrangement in which the characteristics of particular pairs of clients and servers can be known and negotiated in advance of protocol use. Nonetheless, the success rate of using arbitrary clients with arbitrary servers and without such prior negotiation has been extremely high. POP3 is probably the most widely deployed and used Internet applications protocol that is not yet a full Internet Standard. This specification was reviewed for the IESG by John Klensin. -- Jonathan M. Bresler FreeBSD Postmaster jmb@FreeBSD.ORG FreeBSD--4.4BSD Unix for PC clones, source included. http://www.freebsd.org/
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