Post Office Protocol

18. POP is a message-retrieval⁴ protocol used by many IS PC mail clients to get messages from a server, typically your ISP’s mail server. 19. It only allows you to download all messages in your mailbox at once. 20. It works in “pull” mode, the receiving PC initiating the connection. 21. PC-based POP3 mail clients can do this automatically at a preset interval. 22. When you use your Web mail account to access a POP3 mailbox, the mail server opens a connection to the POP3 server just as a PC-based application would. 23. The messages are then copied into your Web mailbox and read via a browser.

24. Since POP3 downloads all the messages in your mailbox, there’s an option to leave messages on the server, so that they can be picked up from different machines without losing any. 25. This does mean that you’ll get every message downloaded every time you connect to the server. 26. If you don’t clean out your mailbox regularly, this could mean long downloads. 27. When using a Web mail account to retrieve POP3 mail, be careful about leaving is messages on the server – if too many build up, each download will take a long time and fill up your inbox. 28. Many Web mail systems won’t recognise messages you’ve already downloaded, so you’ll get duplicates of ones you haven't deleted.

Internet Mail Access Protocol

29. IMAP is similar in operation to POP, but allows you more choice over what messages you download. 30. Initially, only message headers are retrieved, giving information about the sender and subject. 31. You can then download just those messages you want to read. 32. You can also delete individual messages from the server, and some IMAP4 servers let you organise your mail into folders. 33. This makes download times shorter and there’s no danger of losing messages.

Notes

¹rigidly /ˈridʒidli/ adv – точно, суворо

²in batch mode /in ˈbæt∫ ˈmɜυd/ n – у вигляді групи, пачки

³retrieve /riˈtri:v/ v – відновлювати, повертати

⁴retrieval /riˈtri:vǝl/ n – пошук