POP3 vs IMAP4 - Part 1 of 2
This is a two part series focusing on the differences between POP3 and IMAP4. First, I'll start off with POP3!
POP3 – What is it?
POP3 stands for Post Office Protocol v3, the 3rd generation of the protocol that is used today to collect emails from mail servers around the globe.
It can be likened to a Standard Post Office Box that you might rent from the Postal Service where your post (mail) is delivered to the Postal Company (the mail server) and then placed into your Post Office Box (your mailbox) for you to collect. When you visit your Post Office Box (mailbox) to collect your mail, you use a key (username / password) to access your box and then empty the contents of the Post Office Box (mailbox) then close the door, lock it and walk away.
How does it work?
As far as the process of mail collection using POP3 goes on a PC, you configure your email client to tell it where to look to collect your mail (Incoming Mail Server), supply it with your Username and Password so that the server can verify that you are allowed to download the mail in a specific mailbox and then periodically, the email client will connect to the server, check to see if you have any new emails waiting for it to collect and if there are emails waiting, it will download them one by one. When it has collected all the mail it will start to delete the messages (unless you have configured the email client to leave a copy on the server). Once all mail has been deleted from the server, the email client will disconnect and wait for the next scheduled time to check again. If no emails are available for the email client to collect it will close the connection and wait for the next collection time.
Email clients using POP3 to access their emails can configure the client to keep copies of the emails on the server for a specified period of time or until they are deleted from the email client. This can be useful if you have more than one computer or email device such as a smartphone and a desktop PC and you want to receive your emails on both devices (one portable – one not).
POP3 Problems:
One problem with this type of mail collection that often results in the same emails being downloaded time and time again is if a corrupt message arrives in the store (for argument’s sake we will say there are 10 messages to collect and the corrupt message is the 9th email to arrive in the mailbox).
What happens is the email client will connect, authenticate and start to download messages from the server but when it reaches the corrupt message (message number 9), it fails to download it so it then returns to the beginning of the process and starts to download the messages again, starting with message 1 (which has already been downloaded), then message 2 and so on until it reaches the 9th message again where it fails (again) and then starts with message 1 again.
So if you end up with multiple copies of the same emails in your email client – this is why!
I'll next be discussing IMAP4 so check back soon!
If you've any question, problem, suggestion and feedback than please comment below.
Have a nice day!
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