NetMail/3000 is the only standards-based electronic mail system for the HP3000 line of business systems. Designed from the beginning to operate in a mixed environment, and adopting the most common electronic mail protocols in existence, NetMail/3000 provides a solution for companies ranging from single-system HP3000 based environments, to large heterogeneous environments with hundreds of hardware platforms and dozens of existing electronic mail systems. Priced independent of hardware platform and licensed with an unlimited number of mailboxes per system, NetMail/3000 truly provides an electronic communications solution that can grow with any organization.
3k Associates provides POP2 (Post Office Protocol Version 2) and POP3 (Post Office Protocol Version 3) servers. These servers are "bundled" with all NetMail/3000 packages, and are also available as separate products. POP2 and POP3 are Internet-designed specifications for a means of retrieving electronic mail from a "server", which accepts and holds electronic mail for you when your local machine is busy with other tasks (or off).
The beauty of POP is that a client can use POP to retrieve mail from a server, and the user need not ever know where the mail is held, or in fact even know that mail is not already on the local machine. POP was designed to accommodate environments where local users on PCs, Macs, or workstations either didn't desire to or could not afford to run SMTP compatible servers on their individual machines. Since SMTP messages can come in at any time and it is up to the server to be "listening" for mail whenever it is sent, it makes sense to delegate this task to a system which is more able to handle this task, and typically one which is online more of the time (as opposed to your typical PC or workstation which gets turned off overnight). Electronic mail is then accepted by the server on behalf of the local user, and when the local user runs the PC based electronic mail package, any received messages are then downloaded (over the network) to the local system. There is NO logon onto the HP3000 involved, nor does the client even need to be aware that the HP3000 is actually storing their electronic mail til they retrieve it. (Also, as there is no logon required, user license limitations for logons to the HP3000 are not affected; i.e. an 8-user MPE logon licensed HP3000 can handle hundreds or thousands of POP based clients.)
POP clients look and feel like local (or PC LAN based) electronic mail clients. All the message handling and processing takes place on the PC, taking full advantage of the PC (or Mac or Workstation's) interface and capabilities. Local message composition, distribution lists, and binary file attachment are common. Microsoft Windows or Macintosh based clients take advantage of mouse, drag-and-drop, and other graphical conventions). Clients can typically be configured to automatically "check the server" for new mail periodically, and can often be left minimized on the desktop, alerting the user automatically when new mail "arrives" in their inbox.
On the HP3000 side, individual mailboxes can be configured to allow or disallow POP client access. Mailboxes are created on the host (as a normal mailbox), set up to allow POP access, and given a password to be used by the client. POP server processes are managed by the background job and incur minimal CPU impact on the host.
You are free to choose any POP2 or POP3 compliant client you wish. Excellent examples
are available both as public domain packages and as commercial packages. Microsoft Outlook, Eudora
(from Qualcomm), Pegasus, Netscape mail,
and other clients are all POP
compatible. PCPOP and POPMail are two MSDOS based clients available in the public domain;
MacPOP, MailStop, Eudora, and PCPOP all support the Macintosh environment.
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