FreeBSD® Unleashed

Introduction to POP3

We've now taken care of SMTP and Sendmail, and we have the tools we need to configure it according to the needs of almost any typical Internet server. But SMTP is only half of the equation. For e-mail to get completely from one user to another, there's another process that needs to take place: downloading the mail through POP.

The Post Office Protocol became necessary once it was clear that there would ultimately be a great many more Internet users who used graphical client-side e-mail programs on their own dial-up computers, rather than server-side shell clients such as Pine and Mutt, which read mail directly out of the user's mailbox file. To use an MUA such as Microsoft Outlook or Qualcomm's Eudora, the client has to connect ...