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Electronic Mail Task Force Working Group
The Electronic Mail Task Force Working Group met on October 31, 1996
February 19, 1997, and March 19, 1997. The group was assigned the task to evaluate currently available electronic mail products for recommendation to the Penn Community.
The group revisited the requirements set by the prior Electronic Mail Task Force Working Group in the fall of 1995. The three functional tensions that could not be resolved in 1995 continue to be the primary requirements:
- The need to attach arbitrary binary files to messages.
- The need to integrate the user-interface with desktop computers.
- The need for location-independent access to e-mail messages.
The New Electronic Mail application should:
- Provide central storage of user e-mail messages, remote access to user inbox.
- Provide central storage of user configuration data such as preferences & options.
- Meet Internet Standards with high functionality such as ftp and web support.
- Support for a variety of attachment types, such as
MIME, BINHEX, and UUENCODE.
- Run on the University of Pennsylvania recommended Desktop standard.
After careful analysis of what's currently available on the market,
this group has come to the realization that not all listed requirements could be met
this year. From our wish list a narrowed more realistic list of requirements were
obtained :
- Provide Central storage of user e-mail messages.
- Meet Internet standards with high functionality.
- Support for a variety of attachments.
- Run on University recommended Desktop standard.
Currently, the Working group is evaluating products that run on anIMAP4 Server.
We are testing:
- Z-Mail Pro 6.0 from NetManage
- Solstice from Sun Microsystems
- Embla 2.0 from ICL, Inc.
- Netscape Communicator from Netscape
The Z-Mail Pro, Solstice and Embla did not meet our requirements. The group selected Netscape
Communicator as the electronic mail application as the possible contender for use
in Fall 1997.
There are 3 major issues that must be resolved prior to the recommendation of Netscape Communicator as the support electronic mail application :
- Verify that there are no incompatibilities between Elm and Netscape Messenger. Careful testing of the interoperability of the 2 products
is required. Team members will begin testing as soon as possible.
If John reads his e-mail and manages his inbox using Netscape messenger he should also be able
to do the same using Elm without any problems. What happens to the inbox (same set of folders)
and the messages if user jumps back and forth between Netscape Messenger and Elm.
How do IMAP and Elm handle spaces in file and folder names.
- Netscape Messenger does not work with Penn's E-mail directory which uses whois and PH-Server
as an interface to the directory database. Messenger works with the Light Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Server
which is the internet standard for directory service. Finding and deploying an LDAP server
and gateway is on
ISC Networking's Project list.
Because of the scope of the work it is highly unlikely that we would have a production server by September 97.
This is not a showstopper because, as you might all remember, the previous version of Eudora did not
have support for directory Service. So far, we've read about 3 LDAP servers (Michigan's,
Altavista and Netscape) but have not as of yet located a Gateway product.
- Students access from public labs. Netscape Communicator does provide us with remote
access to users inbox but not users specific configuration file. Access from public labs
is hindered. Team members are working on writing and testing a special configuration
file which should allow location independence.
EMTF
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