University of Florida :: Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)

CISE Help & Resources

POP & IMAP

What are POP and IMAP?

POP3 is essentially a mail download protocol. This means that whenever a person checks mail using POP3, all the new mail is typically downloaded to the computer the user is using at the time. This has the unfortunate effect of making it difficult to read mail from different locations while keeping all of the user's messages together in one place.

IMAP4 is essentially a mail access protocol. Mail is kept on a central server, and accessed by any IMAP-capable mail reader from any location. Using this protocol eliminates the difficulties of using POP3 to read mail. Therefore:

The CISE Department uses IMAP as it's primary mail setup since it is far more useful when reading mail from a central location on multiple computers. Limited support for POP3 is available.

Reading POP Email Securely

Users are encouraged to use the IMAP protocol instead, but for those who need POP support for various reasons, it is still supported.

For security reasons, users must use SSL to read POP email. Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla and Netscape 7 all should support POP over SSL.

Outlook:
Properties
   -> Advanced
      -> This server requires a secure
         connection (SSL) (port 995)
Outlook Express
Tools
   -> Accounts (select CISE POP account)
      -> Mail
         -> Properties
            -> Advanced
               -> This server requires a secure
                  connection (SSL) (port 995)
Netscape and Mozilla
View Settings
   -> Server Settings
      -> Use secure connection (SSL)

CISE IMAP Setup

The IMAP server that CISE will be using is the Dovecot IMAP server. Dovecot expects a user's email to be stored in the user's home directory in a folder named Maildir.

As a general rule, users should not modify any files in this directory. Modifying them may render the email stored there unreadable.

For details on the format of this directory and the files in this directory, please refer to the Maildir Format section of this page.

For more information on IMAP itself, as well as a list of available clients, please visit http://www.imap.org/.

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