Post Office Protocol
RFC 918, “Post Office Protocol”, is an Unknown document published in October 1984 by J.K. Reynolds. It has been obsoleted by RFC 937 — refer to the newer document for the authoritative version. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
This RFC suggests a simple method for workstations to dynamically access mail from a mailbox server. The intent of the Post Office Protocol (POP) is to allow a user's workstation to access mail from a mailbox server. It is expected that mail will be posted from the workstation to the mailbox server via the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). This RFC specifies a proposed protocol for the ARPA-Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvement. The status of this protocol is experimental, and this protocol is dependent upon TCP.
What “Unknown” means
The standards-track status of this early RFC was never formally classified.
The canonical text of RFC 918 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
- RFC 917 Internet subnets
- RFC 919 Broadcasting Internet Datagrams
- RFC 916 Reliable Asynchronous Transfer Protocol
- RFC 920 Domain requirements
- RFC 915 Network mail path service
- RFC 921 Domain name system implementation schedule - revised
- RFC 914 Thinwire protocol for connecting personal computers to the Internet
- RFC 922 Broadcasting Internet datagrams in the presence of subnets