Linux Network Administrator's Guide, 3rd Edition

Chapter 15. IMAP

Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) was developed from a need for mobile email access. Many workers read mail from a variety of locations (the office, home, hotel rooms, and so on) and want such flexible features as the ability to download headers first and then selectively download mail messages. The main mail delivery protocols before IMAP, for the Internet, was POP, which offers more rudimentary mail delivery-only functionality

With IMAP, traveling users can access their email from anywhere and download it or leave it on the server as desired. POP, on the other hand, does not work well when users access email from many different machines; users end up with their email distributed across many different email clients. IMAP provides users with the ability to remotely manage multiple email boxes, and store or search as well as archive old messages.

IMAP—An Introduction

IMAP, fully documented in RFC 3501, was designed to provide a robust, mobile mail delivery and access mechanism. For more detail on the protocol and how it functions on the network layer, or for additional information on the numerous specification options, please consult the RFC documentation.

IMAP and POP

POP and IMAP tend to be grouped together or compared, which is a bit unfair since they are dissimilar in many ways. POP was created as a simple mail delivery vehicle, which it does very well. Users connect to the server and obtain their messages, which are then, ideally, deleted from the server. ...