RFC 1939 · INTERNET STANDARD · 1996
MON · 27 JUL 2026
Post Office Protocol - Version 3
Overview
RFC 1939, “Post Office Protocol - Version 3”, is an Internet Standard document published in May 1996 by J. Myers, M. Rose. It obsoletes RFC 1725. It has since been updated by RFC 1957, RFC 2449, RFC 6186, RFC 8314. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
The Post Office Protocol - Version 3 (POP3) is intended to permit a workstation to dynamically access a maildrop on a server host in a useful fashion. [STANDARDS-TRACK]
What “Internet Standard” means
A mature, widely-implemented specification that has completed the full IETF standards process — the highest maturity level on the standards track.
Read this RFC
The canonical text of RFC 1939 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
Relationships to other RFCs
Other RFCs from 1996
- RFC 1938 A One-Time Password System
- RFC 1940 Source Demand Routing: Packet Format and Forwarding Specification
- RFC 1937 "Local/Remote" Forwarding Decision in Switched Data Link Subnetworks
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- RFC 1936 Implementing the Internet Checksum in Hardware
- RFC 1942 HTML Tables
- RFC 1935 What is the Internet, Anyway?
- RFC 1943 Building an X.500 Directory Service in the US