Subject: I-D ACTION:draft-gellens-pop3ext-00.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 09:03:04 -0500

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.

	Title		: POP3 Extension Mechanism
	Author(s)	: L. Lundblade, C. Newman, R. Gellens
	Filename	: draft-gellens-pop3ext-00.txt
	Pages		: 13
	Date		: 13-Feb-98
	
Post Office Protocol version 3 [POP3] is very widely used. However,
while it includes some optional commands (and some useful protocol
extensions have been published), it lacks a mechanism for advertising
support for these extensions or for behavior variations.

Currently these optional features and extensions can only be detected
by probing, if at all.  This is at best inefficient, and possibly
worse. As a result, some clients have manual configuration options for
POP3 server capabilities.

Because one of the most important features of POP3 is its simplicity,
it is not desirable to have a lot of extensions.  However, some
extensions are necessary (such as ones that provide improved security
[POP-AUTH]), some are very desirable in certain situations, and a means
for discovering server behavior is needed.

This specification defines a mechanism to detect support for optional
commands, extensions, and unconditional server behavior.  Included is
an initial set of currently implemented capabilities which vary between
server implementations. This also extends POP3 error messages so that
machine parsable codes can be provided to the client.

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