Electronic Mail Task Force IMAP Client Evaluation Project
Introduction
During the spring of 1998, the Electronic Mail Task Force appointed a team
to conduct a detailed evaluation of new electronic mail client software.
The goal was to select a product that offered both a rich graphical
user interface as well as better support for location independence
(the ability to read mail comfortably from more than one location and
retain access to all messages, new and old). It was anticipated
that a product supporting the IMAP messaging protocol would fulfill
these requirements.
After a two-phase testing and evaluation process,
the Task Force selected Netscape Messenger 4.05 (bundled with Netscape Communicator) as the supported IMAP mail client for 1998-99.
Messenger 4.05 configuration instructions and an information
guide for Local Support Providers are available
on the Penn web.
Note that users who continue to want to use POP mail are not encouraged to migrate to Messenger from Eudora at this time. You are encouraged to use the e-mail client supported in your school or center, or consult with your local support providers (LSPs) before making any decisions with respect to e-mail clients so that local requirements and capabilities can be considered.
Netscape Messenger is not expected to run on Windows desktops running Windows 3.1, or powered by an 80486 (or slower) processor, or with less than 16MB of RAM. Similarly, Messenger is not expected to run on Macintosh systems powered by a 68040 (or slower) processor, or with less than 16MB of RAM.
For departments that support their own mail server
the ISC recommends the use of the IMAP server
from University of Washington, available as part of the IMAP4
"c-client" toolkit, version 4.2 or later. The version of the
server included in the toolkit is 11.237 or later.
The latest version of the toolkit is available from
ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/mail/imap.tar.Z
Evaluation Criteria
The product evaluation focused on software that meets the following basic characteristics:
- Run on the University's recommended desktop standards
for 1998-99.
- Strong support for Internet standards such as SMTP, POP3,
LDAP diectory service, and especially IMAP.
- Provides central storage of user e-mail messages with remote access
to user's inbox. (The ability to store user specific configurations was not
examined this year because of the lack of available standards-based products to support configuration management.)
- Support for a variety of attachment types such as MIME, UUENCODE and
BINHEX.
- Offline e-mail support against an IMAP server (the ability to read and modify
an e-mail message or folder located on the server in a disconnected mode).
The ability of the client to synchronize efficiently with the IMAP server.
- Interoperability between a host based e-mail client (like Elm)
and the GUI IMAP client.
- Support for the University of Washington's IMAP Server which uses the
Berkeley Mailbox format.
Additional Background and Related Resources
