ot: data consumption IMAP vs POP
I have a domain with about 50 mailboxes, server is located here in AUS but most of the users are on a LAN is SEAsia location. They were using POP (with Thunderbird), I suggested then can use IMAP instead, so they did.
now they are asking;
"Looks like Imap is adding a lot to our internet bandwidth"
I guess they have some bandwidth limitation on their link
I think I can understand that IMAP would increase bandwidth requirement, didn't expect it to cause 'problems'
is there any optimization or changes I can make to reduce that ? the b/w limitation are at the client LAN link
any other suggestions ?
thanks, V
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On Wed, 27 Jan 2016, voytek@sbt.net.au wrote:
I have a domain with about 50 mailboxes, server is located here in AUS but most of the users are on a LAN is SEAsia location. They were using POP (with Thunderbird), I suggested then can use IMAP instead, so they did.
now they are asking;
"Looks like Imap is adding a lot to our internet bandwidth"
I guess they have some bandwidth limitation on their link
which limit(s)?
I think I can understand that IMAP would increase bandwidth requirement, didn't expect it to cause 'problems'
is there any optimization or changes I can make to reduce that ? the b/w limitation are at the client LAN link
any other suggestions ?
Do they have problems more while sending or more while reading or more when doing "flagging, moving, deleting"?
Sending bandwitdh can be reduced by using BCC instead of the IMAP append to the sent mailbox. Reading bandwidth should not change, unless they watch really many mailboxes.
Steffen Kaiser -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1
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Den 27. jan. 2016 07:30, skrev Steffen Kaiser:
On Wed, 27 Jan 2016, voytek@sbt.net.au wrote:
I have a domain with about 50 mailboxes, server is located here in AUS but most of the users are on a LAN is SEAsia location. They were using POP (with Thunderbird), I suggested then can use IMAP instead, so they did.
now they are asking;
"Looks like Imap is adding a lot to our internet bandwidth"
I guess they have some bandwidth limitation on their link
which limit(s)?
I think I can understand that IMAP would increase bandwidth requirement, didn't expect it to cause 'problems'
is there any optimization or changes I can make to reduce that ? the b/w limitation are at the client LAN link
any other suggestions ?
Do they have problems more while sending or more while reading or more when doing "flagging, moving, deleting"?
Sending bandwitdh can be reduced by using BCC instead of the IMAP append to the sent mailbox. Reading bandwidth should not change, unless they watch really many mailboxes.
-- Steffen Kaiser ... but of course re-configuring mail-client will cause all mail that is still on the server to be re-down-loaded. Did you specifically ask if bandwidth problems persisted after the first connections ? Might take quite a while if there is a lot of mail. Might be "on demand" when entering a mail-box for the first time. If mail comes pre-sorted into mail-boxes, watching several mail-boxes for new mail might be a long-term "pessimization" (opposite of optimization) .
On 1/27/2016 1:30 AM, Steffen Kaiser skdovecot@smail.inf.fh-brs.de wrote:
Sending bandwitdh can be reduced by using BCC instead of the IMAP append to the sent mailbox.
Hi Steffen,
Can you elaborate on this?
I would have thought that the IMAP Append command would *save* bandwidth (as opposed to having the client save a copy to the Sent folder, thereby uploading the full message a second time).
I want to revisit this with Timo, because there was supposedly a pretty simple way that we could achieve the same thing that gmail does - auto save all sent messages to the designated Sent folder server side, thereby allowing us to disable the 'Save to Sent' function in the client.
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On Wed, 27 Jan 2016, Charles Marcus wrote:
On 1/27/2016 1:30 AM, Steffen Kaiser skdovecot@smail.inf.fh-brs.de wrote:
Sending bandwitdh can be reduced by using BCC instead of the IMAP append to the sent mailbox.
Can you elaborate on this?
I would have thought that the IMAP Append command would *save* bandwidth (as opposed to having the client save a copy to the Sent folder, thereby uploading the full message a second time).
This is exactly, what IMAP APPEND does: The client uploads the message via SMTP first and via IMAP a second time.
If you add a BCC recipient to each message, that is placed by SMTP into the Sent Folder, and disable the IMAP save, you upload the message just once. How you can do this, depends on your SMTP framework. Many people use subaddressing or detail:
address+detail@example.org
===
BTW: There is another annoyance with a limited bandwidth, when you compose a message, MUAs autosave the message into Draft in regular intervals.
Steffen Kaiser -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1
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On 1/27/2016 9:32 AM, Steffen Kaiser skdovecot@smail.inf.fh-brs.de wrote:
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On Wed, 27 Jan 2016, Charles Marcus wrote:
On 1/27/2016 1:30 AM, Steffen Kaiser skdovecot@smail.inf.fh-brs.de wrote:
Sending bandwitdh can be reduced by using BCC instead of the IMAP append to the sent mailbox. Can you elaborate on this?
I would have thought that the IMAP Append command would *save* bandwidth (as opposed to having the client save a copy to the Sent folder, thereby uploading the full message a second time). This is exactly, what IMAP APPEND does: The client uploads the message via SMTP first and via IMAP a second time.
Oops, you're right...
I was thinking of the SMTP Submission Client service discussed here that Timo said would be trivial to do (he said it would take a few lines of code for postfix too, but Wietse seemed amenable to adding it)... I think it may have been using BURL or something, but I'm not sure...
I'd really love to see this implemented. It would make a huge difference for anyone who sends a lot of large attachments like we do.
BTW: There is another annoyance with a limited bandwidth, when you compose a message, MUAs autosave the message into Draft in regular intervals.
Yeah - I usually disable this, and save manually. I generally either finish and send an email, or start one so I won't forget about something and immediately save it. I do want these available through IMAP, so I do still want it saved to the IMAP Drafts folder, otherwise, if I had bandwidth concerns about this and still wanted continuous auto save, I'd pint my Drafts to the Local Folders Drafts...
On 01/27/2016 03:35 AM, voytek@sbt.net.au wrote:
I have a domain with about 50 mailboxes, server is located here in AUS but most of the users are on a LAN is SEAsia location. They were using POP (with Thunderbird), I suggested then can use IMAP instead, so they did.
now they are asking;
"Looks like Imap is adding a lot to our internet bandwidth"
I guess they have some bandwidth limitation on their link
I think I can understand that IMAP would increase bandwidth requirement, didn't expect it to cause 'problems'
is there any optimization or changes I can make to reduce that ? the b/w limitation are at the client LAN link
any other suggestions ?
thanks, V
Your users IMAP-clients can (hopefully) be configured to automatically cache emails once they were downloaded. If that is configured, there should be no difference in bandwidth usage between POP and IMAP.
Greetings Daniel
On 27/01/16 04:35, voytek@sbt.net.au wrote:
I have a domain with about 50 mailboxes, server is located here in AUS but most of the users are on a LAN is SEAsia location. They were using POP (with Thunderbird), I suggested then can use IMAP instead, so they did.
now they are asking;
"Looks like Imap is adding a lot to our internet bandwidth"
I guess they have some bandwidth limitation on their link
I think I can understand that IMAP would increase bandwidth requirement, didn't expect it to cause 'problems'
is there any optimization or changes I can make to reduce that ? the b/w limitation are at the client LAN link
any other suggestions ?
When you change from POP3 to IMAP then user agents will redownload all messages once. I can't see any other reason for any significant bandwith increment other than that. Are you sure there really is more bandwith used once the mails have been redownloaded?
Sami
participants (6)
-
Charles Marcus
-
Daniel Tröder
-
Håkon Alstadheim
-
Sami Ketola
-
Steffen Kaiser
-
voytek＠sbt.net.au