[Ilugc] [OT] POP/IMAP vs. online interface for mail: which uses more bytes?
- From: rajasuperman@xxxxxxxxx (Raja Subramanian)
- Date: Thu May 25 17:01:06 2006
Hi,
On 5/25/06, Binand Sethumadhavan <binand@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'd arrange them in increasing order of bytes transferred as:
Gmail - IMAP - Other web based mail - POP
IMAP may not be as efficient as it seems...
IMAP is bandwidth efficient only if you don't sync mail and load it
in parts (headers, body, attachments, etc). I find this impractical
because by not syncing you never have a full copy of your email
locally and must connect to the IMAP server fetch message
bodies, attachments etc.
If I don't use the "Sync on Arrival" mail extension, Thunderbird does
not cache the mail body and re-fetches every time you click on an
email. Waste of bandwidth. It also has the annoying side effect
that your email does not load immediately, but instead takes a few
seconds to load from server.
There are occasions when IMAP sync goes beserk and chews
traffic. This happens with Thunderbird, imapsync, and worst of
all on Outlook which becomes totally unresponsive during sync.
Moving emails is expensive (esp. to Trash). It involves moving
the email on the server and a download/sync to the corresponding
local folder.
Sending email on IMAP is expensive -- once for SMTP to server,
and again to store it in the "Sent Items" IMAP folder on the server.
And if you are really unlucky, once more to download/sync it to
save it in your local Sent Items folder.
Most of these quirks can probably be ironed out by carefully
setting your mail client's options, but the fixes are often obscure.
IMO, POP is much nicer on bandwidth, but offers a reduced
feature set.
- Raja
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