Re: [fetchmail-users] reasonable poll intervals

[Uli Z. <ul...@ri...>]

Am 12.07.2006 um 18:15 schrieb Matthias Andree:

>> Of course, the ideal solution technically would be a mail server  
>> that delivers mail directly via SMTP as long as this works, and  
>> immediately switches to POP when the recipient's computer isn't  
>> connected to the network anymore.
>
> That requires a notion of "being logged in" with authentication  
> that neither SMTP nor POP3 offer.

Not necessarily. You could make SMTP switch to forwarding mail to the  
server's POP spool as soon as the recipient's own machine cannot be  
reached via SMTP. Only an explicit command from the recipient's  
machine (that is sent when the recipient's machine goes online) would  
switch the SMTP server back to forwarding mails directly to  
recipient's machine. That should work as long as the  network is OK.  
If it is down for a short amount of time that goes unnoticed by the  
recipient, the recipient will see no reason to send another "switch  
back to direct delivery" command to the server, and not receive any  
mails, while they are accumulated at the POP server. Of course, the  
recipient's machine could routinely send such a command (and make  
fetchmail connect to the POP account, just in case) every 15 minutes  
or so.

But as I said, there's a lot of complexity involved in this solution.

             Bye
                     Uli
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