Amazon.com Review
Plain old Post Office Protocol (POP) is fine for just logging in and grabbing your e-mail from a dial-up service, but more elaborate mail-management and messaging solutions require a more capable protocol. The Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) fits the bill by allowing you to pull off all sorts of mail-management tricks. With IMAP, a single user can see the same messages and folders on many computers, or multiple users (say, members of a sales team) each can integrate a common folder into individual organizational hierarchies.
Managing IMAP shows how to perform these feats and many others, and presents a rigorous comparison of IMAP clients and servers.
On the server side, the book focuses on the University of Washington IMAP server--the standard implementation that IMAP inventor Mark Crispin wrote--and the feature-rich Cyrus IMAP server. The features of each are explained, in addition to how each integrates with its operating system. "Common Tasks" for each are covered, including details of precisely what system administrators have to do to establish access privileges on a mailbox, add users, set up shared folders, and so on through their respective feature sets. Most of the how-to material takes the form of "type this, get that" listings, with plenty of annotation that explains what's going on. Later sections are platform-neutral, covering security (perhaps better covered in specialized texts), spam filtering, and performance optimization. Managing IMAP has done a great job of cataloguing and commenting upon the various IMAP administration utilities that exist. --David Wall
Topics covered: The Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) and its implementation, especially in the University of Washington's IMAP server and the Cyrus IMAP server. After presenting the case for IMAP and comparing it to Post Office Protocol (POP), the book shows how to set up and administer both major IMAP servers. It also compares IMAP clients. Other topics that are covered include security, user management, and scalability. A directory of IMAP administration interfaces and an IMAP command reference round out the volume.
About the Author
Dianna and Kevin Mullet are a husband and wife team who share their home in Carrollton, Texas, with awk and Lavender, who are cats, and Milo and Goldie, who are beagles. Dianna and Kevin met, married, and conceived this book while working at the University of North Texas. Dianna is a senior Unix system administrator for a leading provider of flight simulation, training, and defense communication systems, where she maintains the Unix infrastructure and plays a leadership role in overall IT system design and integration. In her previous career, Dianna was a widely published physical chemist. She lives and works on the leading edge, but keeps an eye out for technologies whose growth outstrips our ability to manage them. Dianna is a qualified scuba rescue diver and relishes opportunities to go on analog vacations with Kevin, who insists on packing a notebook PC and digital camera to maintain his umbilical cord to the Net. Kevin is a voracious punster who got bitten by the computer bug when he bought a Timex/Sinclair 1000 in 1982 and found himself chomping at the bit to change careers from photographer to computer geek. (Coincidentally, Dianna bought a TS1000 at the same time, and it was also her first computer.) One thing led to another, and he found himself working for local, regional, and national ISPs as a network analyst and Unix system administrator, and was network security manager for the University of North Texas. Kevin and Dianna have started Atomic Consulting, Inc., which does Unix and network consulting for small and medium size companies in the Dallas area. Kevin believes open source is more a religion than a license, that the Internet will supplant most national governments, that most economies will be reduced if not eliminated by nanotechnology, and that the ISO seven-layer model and the Sanskrit chakra system are essentially the same thing. Also a certified scuba diver and an avid photographer, Kevin lives to go on vacation with Dianna, who insists on bringing her analog camera, and no computer, and preserving the pioneering offline spirit of the family vacation, at least until the last hour or two of the day. When they're not busy helping to make the Net a better, safer, more interesting place, Dianna and Kevin are busy networking their new home from scratch. Since they're in one of the few neighborhoods that can get really good ADSL service, they may never move.
Dianna and Kevin Mullet are a husband and wife team who share their home in Carrollton, Texas, with awk and Lavender, who are cats, and Milo and Goldie, who are beagles. Dianna and Kevin met, married, and conceived this book while working at the University of North Texas. In her previous career, Dianna was a widely published physical chemist. She lives and works on the leading edge, but keeps an eye out for technologies whose growth outstrips our ability to manage them. Dianna is a qualified scuba rescue diver and relishes opportunities to go on analog vacations with Kevin, who insists on packing a notebook PC and digital camera to maintain his umbilical cord to the Net. Kevin is a voracious punster who got bitten by the computer bug when he bought a Timex/Sinclair 1000 in 1982 and found himself chomping at the bit to change careers from photographer to computer geek. (Coincidentally, Dianna bought a TS1000 at the same time, and it was also her first computer.) One thing led to another, and he found himself working for local, regional, and national ISPs as a network analyst and Unix system administrator, and was network security manager for the University of North Texas. Kevin and Dianna have started Atomic Consulting, Inc., which does Unix and network consulting for small and medium size companies in the Dallas area. Kevin believes open source is more a religion than a license, that the Internet will supplant most national governments, that most economies will be reduced if not eliminated by nanotechnology, and that the ISO seven-layer model and the Sanskrit chakra system are essentially the same thing. Also a certified scuba diver and an avid photographer, Kevin lives to go on vacation with Dianna, who insists on bringing her analog camera, and no computer, and preserving the pioneering offline spirit of the family vacation, at least until the last hour or two of the day. When they're not busy helping to make the Net a better, safer, more interesting place, Dianna and Kevin are busy networking their new home from scratch. Since they're in one of the few neighborhoods that can get really good ADSL service, they may never move.
