Re: Re-connecting

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005, John Drake wrote:
> Plus if you have
> your own Linux box set up (as many people do)
> you could set up your own Pop3 server running
> on UDP and use that as a bridge to the "real
> world".  At least that makes sense to me.

Look, it's not a matter of being "mean", "rude", or even of being too
unimaginative to think outside the box. POP3 and other such protocols
use TCP for good reason.

Ethernet, IP, and UDP do not guarantee delivery of packets. TCP builds
on that foundation to provide guarantees. With a UDP connection, if a
packet is dropped in the middle of an e-mail message, there's no way to
know about it or recover from it. I suppose you're welcome to *try*
running e-mail over UDP, but you'll either not want to OR you'll have to
invent something similar to TCP to provide delivery guarantees. And
then you won't be speaking POP3 anymore...
-- 
Roger Ivie
[email protected]
http://anachronda.webhop.org/
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