E-mail Past Present and Future: Migrating towards IMAP

1
E-mail Past Present and Future Migrating
towards IMAP

• Mark V Silis
• Manager Network Services
• April 19, 2005

2
Overview

• History of Electronic Mail
• The Post Office Protocol (POP)
• The Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP)

3
History of Electronic Mail

• Originally developed as a method for the systems
  administrators to notify mainframe users of the
  system circa 1965
• Paradigm changed with the birth of ARPAnet in
  1969, the goal was to extend the functionality of
  the original
• By 1972 there were methods to send e-mail from
  one machine to another
• Ray Tomlinson is frequently credited with
  inventing e-mail. Although can anyone identify
  his major contribution to e-mail?

4
From Mainframes to Workstations

• By the early 1980s MITs project Athena and CMUs
  project Andrew pioneer the concept of the
  workstation
• E-mail paradigm also began to change from a
  workstation to workstation system into a client
  server application
• Client server applications require standards and
  protocols.

5
The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)

• Also known as RFC 821
• Provides host to host mail transport over TCP/IP
  using internet port 25
• Allows users to send e-mail messages from their
  mail client to other users on the internet
• Designed at a time where the Internet was a safe
  place and everyone was a good guy, much to our
  regret
• Does not provide for authentication of submitted
  e-mail messages

6
The Post Office Protocol (POP)

• Also known as RFC 1939 or POP3
• Allows for local clients retrieving e-mail
  messages from a remote server over TCP/IP
• Several variations of POP exist, including SPOP,
  APOP and KPOP.
• Kerberized POP or KPOP was developed here at MIT
  as part of the Athena computing environment
• E-mail is only stored on the remote server
  temporarily until local client can pick up the
  messages, unless you use leave mail on server.

7
Early Generation Mail Clients

• Unixs Mail Handler programs (MH)
• MITs TechMail
• Countless other homegrown clients
• The early generation of e-mail client landscape
  was marked by variety
• As desktop computers began to mature in the early
  1990s and network connectivity became more
  common, we begin to see the first commercial
  e-mail clients

8
Qualcomms Eudora Pro

• Introduced to the MIT community in the mid 1990s
  to replace TechMail
• Supported Kerberos based POP (KPOP)
• Provided support for hesiod based lookups of PO
  server based on username
• Offered integration with our On-line directory
  using the finger and PH protocols
• Supported both the Macintosh and Windows
  platforms
• By 1997 the predominant e-mail client at MIT

9
Microsofts Outlook

• First released as Outlook 97 in 1997
• Designed to work in conjunction with Microsofts
  Exchange 5.0 server
• Lacked support for Kerberos POP (KPOP), hesiod
  and On-line directory integration
• Early releases were not viable with MITs e-mail
  infrastructure

10
From Client Server to the WWW

• In the late 1990s we see a trend towards more
  mobile computing as laptops become smaller,
  network connectivity is increasingly ubiquitous
  and the .COMs are booming
• E-mail service providers (Hotmail, Yahoo etc)
  begin offering their services to clients via the
  Web, and move away from thick clients
• Web based e-mail services allow users easy access
  to their e-mail from anywhere in the world, and
  remove the burden of maintaining desktop software
  compatibility

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MITs Webmail Service

• Introduced to the MIT community in 2000
• Provides members of the MIT community access to
  their MIT e-mail from any web browser
• Supports a user community accessing e-mail from
  more than one location
• Presents new challenges as the traditional mail
  access methods (POP/KPOP) are designed for a
  single client accessing and storing their mail on
  a single workstation
• A different protocol is necessary for this new
  paradigm

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Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP)

• Also known as RFC 2060
• Provides a method for local clients accessing a
  mail store on a remote share or server
• Supports multiple computers accessing new and
  saved messages from multiple locations
• Supports authentication with Kerberos and
  username password over an encrypted SSL connection

13
SMTP Authentication

• Spammers take advantage of other sites mail
  servers and hijack them for broadcasting their
  unwanted messages
• Continued abuse of SMTP servers by spammers
  requires service providers to limit access to
  their resources
• SMTP authentication provides a method for users
  to authenticate to their service provider before
  being permitted to send their message
• E-mail client support for SMTP authentication
  initially limited

14
MIT Mail Client Standards

• Support the IMAP protocol w/ SSL as the default
  for accessing mail stored on MITs mail servers
• Utilize LDAP for accessing information in MITs
  on-line directory, instead of the finger or ph
  protocols
• Support authenticated SMTP for sending mail using
  MITs outgoing mail servers

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Migrating from POP to IMAP

• A dwindling few vendors provide support for our
  KPOP implementation
• IMAP is the strategic direction for e-mail client
  standards used by 3rd party vendor such as
  Microsoft and Apple
• Provides better support for our user community as
  their computing continues to become truly mobile
• POP puts a significantly higher load on the MIT
  mail servers resources than IMAP
• Majority of our user community has already
  migrated to IMAP at this time
• Simplifies end user support and software
  maintenance

16
Next Generation Mail Clients

• Microsofts Outlook client using IMAP w/ SSL
• Apples Mail App
• TechTimes Oracle Connector for Outlook
• Eudora Pro version 5.2.1 and later
• Snapper Mail
• Versa Mail
• A wide variety of web based e-mail solutions

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The End

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