Ben Bucksch wrote:
> Adam Bailey wrote:
>
>> Point out a single commercial provider that has as many subscribers as
>> AOL and is using POP3.
>>
> T-Online has 7-8 Million subscribers. Technically, there's not much
> difference between 30 Million and 7 Million. (Just use 4 times as many
> machines - one hostname maps to n IP addresses.)
>
>> No one knows if POP3 can scale that high, because no one has tried.
>>
>> Furthermore, POP3 wouldn't interface well with AOL's current IMAP-like
>> system. Does AOL scrap its entire email system and switch over to
>> something
>> completely different?
>>
> No, but POP3 can be offered as *additional* protocol. Which would also
> be the answer to you question - only a part of AOL users would use POP3,
> so AOL would have to feed only a few million subscribers. The IMAP-like
> servers might even be dis-stressed by that. (Thus, the overall load gets
> down, because, as I pointed out, IMAP-like protocols cause more stress
> on server.)
>
> What am I discussing here?
>
>>> Just ask an arbitary ISP other than AOL. All ISPs I know "support"
>>> arbitary clients, just that the hotline might not be able to help.
>>>
>> No ISP is anywhere near as big as AOL.
>>
>> Furthermore, the bigger ones (ie:
>> EarthLink) are frequently criticized as having lousy support.
>>
> AOL is too *shurg*
>
> Support which is as lousy as that of AOL does scale well - just add
> people. They take only about 2 weeks to learn (anyway). (That's why the
> support is so lousy.)
>
>>> It is trivial to forge emails looking to come from aol members by
>>> sedning them from another ISP.
>>>
>> Not accurately.
>>
> huh? Of course, it's trivial. Just enter a "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" as email
> address in your Mozilla profile.
>
>
Funny you mention T-Online. Just so happens that over 50% of the
attempted breakins to my private FTP server come from hackers with a
T-Online address .. Interesting.
--
Jay Garcia - Netscape Champion
Novell MCNE-5/CNI-Networking Technologies-OSI
UFAQ - http://www.UFAQ.org
