POP3 versus SMTP

'scorthy

O.K. I'm not IT but piggy-in-the-middle between web designers and IT. Recently our organisations changed our website and the new company set up email accounts for us. During the transition we use web exchange to access emails. Now the IT guys come in to set up the old and some new accounts and want to go SMTP but our web guys want pop3. Our site sits on their server as do our emails.
Why would the IT guys be so obstinate in wanting to go with SMTP?

Webmonkey

Eh, they both serve different purposes - SMTP is for actually transferring and sending mail. POP is the protocol for receiving mail. Need both

aidan_walsh

Are you sure you mean SMTP and not IMAP? SMTP is the protocol used for sending mail, POP3 and IMAP are incoming mail protocols.

jamesd

The pop that web guys are on about is they host your mail accounts and mail and you just pop the mail down off them onto your Pc's or server.
SMTP is where the mail is delivered directly to your server, the web guys just create a mail pointer (mx record) that says foward all the mail for your domain to your external ip address and that is then pointed by your firewall to your server.

I always go for SMTP.

'scorthy

aidan_walsh wrote: »

Are you sure you mean SMTP and not IMAP? SMTP is the protocol used for sending mail, POP3 and IMAP are incoming mail protocols.

Thanks Webmonkey, I Googled the STMP & POP3 so I have a fair idea about the different - push - pull.

aidan_walsh; I'm pretty sure he said STMP, IMAP was never mentioned in any of the conversation today.

Does the IT guy think there is a security issue?
What I'm afraid of is if we fall out with the web designers, who have access to our emails on their server, as is the website, that we will be left high and dry if they pull the plug over say website maintainance orconsultation fees.
Web guy says we can change the password so they cannot access our email of their server; I'm not sure that if they really wanted too that they could get around this.

'scorthy

jamesd wrote: »

The pop that web guys are on about is they host your mail accounts and mail and you just pop the mail down off them onto your Pc's or server.
SMTP is where the mail is delivered directly to your server, the web guys just create a mail pointer (mx record) that says foward all the mail for your domain to your external ip address and that is then pointed by your firewall to your server.

I always go for SMTP.

Why? and thanks for the reply

jamesd

One reason could be as you said above - If you fall out with the developers they could close down your pop email accounts, with smtp the mail is sent directly to the server via the mx record so you control the accounts and the passwords.
2nd advantage is it is alot easier to configure than pop.

I would advise you use some sort of external anti viral and anti spam software like postini as your mail passes throught them first and then to your mail server where you rescan it for virus's and spam.

ressem

Can you clarify the situation?

At the moment, all mail to your domain address @whatever.ie is delivered to the company that hosts your web site (using SMTP). From there you pull your mail (addressed to you) down using POP3, and push it using SMTP (mail addressed to others).

Now I have to guess here, as we're lacking info, but the IT people in your company may be looking to set up a mail server internally in your company, such as MS Exchange or MDaemon.
This would mean, as jamesd pointed out, that your incoming mail might be set to bypass the current mail providers so the SMTP mail comes immediately to your company.

Depending on your current mail providers, number of users and a load of other factors, this might be better for backup and recovery, and allow you to purchase better antivirus and antispam solutions, or audit and archive outgoing mail.
Or it might be an overexpensive indulgence. We'd have to know more about the situation to advise.

Though your IT people should be able to give you a list of bullet points, a price estimate for their plans and how it would be better/cheaper than the current situation.

Usually the web designers will not be the ones who own and run the server storing your mail. They'll just have set up an account with a third party on your behalf.

'scorthy

Thanks jamesd and ressem for your replies;
The website went live about a month ago and since then the secretary has been accessing the groups emails via Web Exchange. There is not a lot of email traffic as I gather that most of the organisations business are carried out using good old reliable fax. No POP3 accounts have yet been set up as the IT guys were notified about the website change over and the situation regarding the emails at that time but decided to show up only yesterday. Personally, from what you've told me I don't like the idea of the organisations emails, no matter how innocuous, sitting on the server of a volatile web designer. Also other factors that I hadn't considered until you mentioned them such as their firewall, anti-virus and anti-spam clients have to be ascertained.

Dardania

if i might offer a suggestion: have a look at using Google Apps to handle all of your organisations email.

It's an excellent platform, has all the anti-virus / anti-spam services you will ever need, in it's free guise has a phenomenal amount of email storgae, has the option of getting your email via POP3 / IMAP or web interface, and mostly, you're not dependant on a web designer.

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html

'scorthy

Thanks Dardanis,

would you believe I've just come a meeting and suggested same! The IT guys eventually sorted out whatever petty issue they had with the organisation and set up the POP3 accounts. I was able to set up my new email account remotely using the Thunderbird email client, albeit after many attempts.

Thanks to all who replied.

johnmacward

SMTP has another big advantage in that it's instant, not delayed by scheduled POP pull downs (which can be every 15 minutes - so much for fast communication). So for example, when Carlos in Brazil sends you an e-mail at 12:00:00 it's routed through the internet pretty much instantly and get's to you at (probably) 12:00:10 (maybe quicker or slower depending on the quality / stabilty of networks it travels through, amount of routers / hops, distance blah blah).

Also you have the ability to create as many e-mail addresses as you like - no need to go to an e-mail hosts control panel, set up new accounts and then duplicate the process on your Exchange server. It reduces complexity on your end too.

The general consensus in the IT world is if you are an organisation of any size you should use SMTP to send and receive e-mail. POP is for babies (or tiny companies).

'scorthy

johnmacward wrote: »

The general consensus in the IT world is if you are an organisation of any size you should use SMTP to send and receive e-mail. POP is for babies (or tiny companies).

Thanks johnmacward,
our organisation is small, less than 9 accounts, of which 4 are really used to any extent. I was able to set up remote access to one of the accounts using Thunderbird and it was possible to set the pull down time to auto or down to a minute.

Dardania

In the pessimistic event that one of your 9 computers that access the email accounts fail (IE Windows trips over itself / hard disc dies) do you have a backup of that user's email to get them running again on their new PC / Installation?

D

'scorthy

good point Dardania but I can't say for certain what their configuration is as the IT guys EVENTUALLY agreed to set up POP3. With SMTP the emails are on the server so if the PC goes belly-up the emails can be retrieved later ( I think that's what others have said).
Personally, I do most of the work for the organisation from my home PC and I know exactly where my emails are stored on my external HD. I also Bcc sent emails to a Google account (not sure how to set up Google for incomming emails yet). But maybe backing up emails to an external account is a subject for another thread.

Dardania

I would say that it is a pretty significant point, because you're going to find that as people transition from using fax to email, the volume of communications will increase (email is so much easier, not to mention cheaper than fax) however with this increased volume of email, the potential for virii/malware to infect users computers will sky rocket. To give an example, with POP3 email clients such as Thunderbird or Outlook (Express), users will just click on any email or attachment they see, and as they haven't been exposed to the dangers of executable viruses yet, they will probably run files such as cuteanimalphotos.jpg.exe which is a virus to wipe your hard drive!

To come clean here, I do run a nixer business advising organisations on safe, efficient email solutions (among other things), and from experience I can say that you may be getting off to a wrong start here...particularly if you have the view that SMTP can save your users. To clarify, SMTP is a protocol for communication between mail servers, or for sending emails - whereas POP3 and IMAP are common protocols for receving emails to a client computer from a mail server. With POP3, the most typical solution is to download the email from the server onto the clients computer, and once that is done, it will erase the email from the server...

Do you have any real time virus scanning before emails hit users computers?

Your gmail copy idea is good, but I suspect there may a better solution out there for you!

'scorthy

Thanks again Dardania, I remember a previous post in which you acclaimed the virtues of going google apps and it having all the necessary anti virii/malware screening etc.
The emails are hosted on the web designers server. I PRESUME they have the latest software to prevent infection. My mission was to get a web site up and running for the organisation I never thought that much about the emails until the IT guys started to kick up about going POP3. It's all working fine now until a virus hits and then I suppose I'll get the "I told you so" from the IT guys. As I said in my first thread..I'm piggy in the middle.

Dardania

One way of resolving the piggy in the middle element for your messaging is to remove one of the parties from the equation - namely the web desigers. They shouldn't be deciding on your messaging policies (unless the messaging policies plays a central role to the operation of the website, but I wouldn't imagine so...)

The typical demarcation between web and email for a domain name is at domain name service (DNS) level
say you have a domain name (joebloggs.ie), you have a DNS service which says:
any time someone types the address joebloggs.ie into a web browser, up pops you website from a server called www.joebloggs.ie
when someone sends a mail to jim@joebloggs.ie, the email is handled by server mailserver.joesbloggs.ie, for subsequent delivery to Jim

the web server should be managed by the web developers, and the email sever managed by your email provider, and the link between your domain name, and these two distinct services is the domain name service, which is managed by your web developer, as it is closely aligned with your web server

johnmacward

'scorthy wrote: »

O.K. I'm not IT but piggy-in-the-middle between web designers and IT. Recently our organisations changed our website and the new company set up email accounts for us. During the transition we use web exchange to access emails. Now the IT guys come in to set up the old and some new accounts and want to go SMTP but our web guys want pop3. Our site sits on their server as do our emails.
Why would the IT guys be so obstinate in wanting to go with SMTP?

You say during the interim period you use "Web exchange" - does this mean you are using an Exchange server to handle mail requirements (to some extent or in the past)?

'scorthy

johnmacward wrote: »

You say during the interim period you use "Web exchange" - does this mean you are using an Exchange server to handle mail requirements (to some extent or in the past)?

Hi johnmacward, in the past, for about a month. Now all accounts are set up POP3 on about 4 PCs and my own account in Thunderbird.

johnmacward

So in other words you're doing a direct POP pull down directly from each machine as opposed to an Exchange Server handling POP. Are you using Outlook / Outlook Express on the other machines?

The reason I bring this up is that Exchange sorts out one of your important problems - the backing up of mails on the Exchange server in it's database files which helps when as Dardania said earlier, when a machine goes belly up you reinstall it and reconnect it to the Exchange Server again and it will grab all the previous mails and waiting new items and things will look the same as they we're before the "belly up" situation. But if you're no longer using Exchange then there are fairly simple ways to back up Outlook or even Outlook Express.

'scorthy

johnmacward wrote: »

So in other words you're doing a direct POP pull down directly from each machine as opposed to an Exchange Server handling POP. Are you using Outlook / Outlook Express on the other machines?

The reason I bring this up is that Exchange sorts out one of your important problems - the backing up of mails on the Exchange server in it's database files which helps when as Dardania said earlier, when a machine goes belly up you reinstall it and reconnect it to the Exchange Server again and it will grab all the previous mails and waiting new items and things will look the same as they we're before the "belly up" situation. But if you're no longer using Exchange then there are fairly simple ways to back up Outlook or even Outlook Express.

AFAIK, emails are retained on the web developers server (I'll need to confirm that). If not, then I'll need to speak to all users and explain a method for backing up as you point out through Outlook or as Dardania mentions gmail.

Dardania

A way of figuring out how your infrastructure is currently configured is to run one of the many online dns checker websites against your domain name.

This one: http://pingability.com/zoneinfo.jsp can give you information what email server you're running (be it microsoft exchange, Exim, Google Apps etc.) - this info is listed under the Server 'Hello' Line

'scorthy

Thanks Dardania, I presume that I'll need to ping from one of the PC's loacted at the organisations base?

Dardania

No you can do it from anywhere - these websites look up publicly available information that's needed for email servers to send information to you.

'scorthy

Dardania wrote: »

No you can do it from anywhere - these websites look up publicly available information that's needed for email servers to send information to you.

Thanks for that; I can see that under server 'hello' line that it is the website hosting company's server, not the server at the web developers site.

Dardania

That's a bit more reassuring, provided the web hosting account is directly paid for by yourselves and not through the web developer.

Without knowing the specific package you're on, from experience, web hosting companies wouldn't give you a fantastic email setup. Just looking around some of the Irish hosts there, some of them do offer IMAP access which would be good if you could avail of it.

'scorthy

Dardania, I am indebted.

Also on the ping:

HEADS UP:
Your domain xxxx.ie has only a single MX record 'mail.xxxxxxx.ie'. If you add a
secondary mail server then you will still be able to accept email if your primary mail server is
unavailable.

ERROR:
There was a problem while talking with the mail server. Got 'Socket Timeout Exception: Read
timed out'

Is this normal?

Dardania

no worries! - I find it far easier to make judgements on solid information rather than conjecture...

From your description, you can derive two pieces of information...

1. You only have a single incoming mail server (Mail eXchanger) This in itself is a bit abnormal, as most domains typically have 2 or 3 servers that can handle incoming mail being sent to you (the idea being that if the first mail server dies, the email gets routed to the second server, and so on)

2. The timeout error means that the DNS checker site was unable to connect to the mail server. This could indicate a problem with the mail server, or just a routing issue between the dns checker and your mail server. normally I wouldn't be too concerned about this (of the 5 no. incoming mail servers my domain has listed, 1 of them is timing out) but in your case, you only have 1 mail server so if it's inacessible you're snookered if people are sending you mail. Do you notice a delay between people sending you email, and it being in your mailbox for collection?

Just a thought - what happens if you type mail.yourdomainname.ie into a web browser? Do you get a web interface to check your mail?

Another thought - when you configured thunderbird for email - what outgoing (SMTP) server did you specify - mail.yourdomainanem.ie or smtp.yourisp.ie? Becuase not only do you have to consider storing mails incoming to you, you also have to consider mails you send out...

'scorthy

"Just a thought - what happens if you type mail.yourdomainname.ie into a web browser? Do you get a web interface to check your mail?"
Yes, H-SPHERE comes up and then the option to enter ID & password.

"Another thought - when you configured thunderbird for email - what outgoing (SMTP) server did you specify - mail.yourdomainname.ie or smtp.yourisp.ie? Because not only do you have to consider storing mails incoming to you, you also have to consider mails you send out..."

As I access the organisations emails from my own PC at another location I think I'm using this company's server so their ISP. Thunderbird gives me the option within 'copies & folders' where to place Sent emails.
Believe it or not but the organisation I'm involved with would only do 25% of their communication using email, the majority is still smail, phone and fax.

Dardania

Depending on what version of H-Sphere your webhost is running, this user guide might be useful to you:

http://hsphere.parallels.com/docs/3.3/user/parallels-hsphere-3.3-user-guide.pdf

Page 70 onwards deals with configuring email services at domain level from the domain control panel...you'd need the domain administrator username/password to look at this page.

not the most intuitive interface around but I'm sure it would work!