On Mon, 3 Sep 2012 20:15:27 +1000 "Voytek Eymont" voytek@sbt.net.au wrote:
in my limited experience, when I tried to set Outlook Express clients with my Dovecot 2, I couldn't get to do ssl/tls on port 110, only on 995; (I think..? I struck same with IMAP, couldn't get ssl/tls on 143, but, got it on 993)
question: is it because Outlook Express does SSL only, but not TLS? (or is it simply because it's crappy application ?)
The ports 143 and 993 are used in different way when you want to have TLS. In case of 143, you begin the communication in unencrypted mode, then tell the server that you want to initiate a TLS handshake (you literally send a STARTTLS string to it). After that both client and server start negotiating the TLS connection (and hopefully they manage to do it :).
With the port 993 the expected/standard behavior is that you begin the TLS handshake right upon establishing the connection. Normally the servers will not accept any unencrypted IMAP command on it (in other words, you don't send STARTTLS to the server, the server expects you to start the handshake right away).
Similar concept is implemented for POP3, SMTP, LDAP, XMPP, and many others...
Btw, SSL and TLS are kind of the same things (or to be more precise when people are talking about it they refer to the same thing, unless they're crypto techies which are using the terminology correctly :)
Best regards
P.S. It's quite probably a crappy application as well :)
-- Branko Majic Jabber: branko@majic.rs Please use only Free formats when sending attachments to me.
Бранко Мајић Џабер: branko@majic.rs Молим вас да додатке шаљете искључиво у слободним форматима.