Exchange - SMTP
- Exchange and POP3 Diatribe -
 [SIMPLER-WEBB SOAPBOX]

The purpose of Simpler-Webb's Exchange resources is to explain how to eliminate the need for your ISP based POP account, NOT how to get Exchange Server to download mail from a POP server.

At Simpler-Webb, we have a fairly strong opinion on this. POP is a client-server protocol not a server-server protocol. We believe you should not force your server to do something it inherently should not have to do. In fact this is something that Exchange Server was not designed to do - nor should it have been!

While Exchange can be made to do this with some third party add-ons, none of them have proven as stable or as feature complete as the Exchange product itself. Because the SMTP delivery envelope is lost when a message is delivered to a POP mailbox, it is impossible to correctly retrieve and redeliver multiple users' mail from a single POP mailbox. Between the time and trouble of administering this kludge, and the insecurity of passing clear-text passwords over the net, the potential cost savings is just not justified. Just how important is email to your company? Important enough to buy Exchange Server and the client licenses? Then it ought to be important enough to run correctly.

What many ISPs are starting to realize is that setting up an SMTP connection to an Exchange server is EASIER and CHEAPER than maintaining a global POP account or a set of POP accounts. Sadly, some ISPs have not seen the light yet. What we are talking about is mail forwarding, some DNS entries, and perhaps queueing. No accounts, no mail storage, no passwords, no sendmail tricks.

We maintain a list of ISPs that understand this so that they get rewarded for it. Hopefully they will find the increase in business measurable, and the other ISPs will start to notice the loss of business.

For further discussion of this topic ad-nauseum, refer to the archives of the Microsoft newsgroups found at http://www.dejanews.com.