Welcome to Solstice Internet Mail Server 2.0

Product Manuals

Solstice^TM Internet Mail Server^TM software is an advanced mail solution for today's Solaris^TM workgroups. Solstice Internet Mail Server provides open, Internet-based mail built on key Internet standards such as IMAP4, POP3, SMTP, and MIME. Solstice Internet Mail Server v2.0 also includes use of the five Solstice Internet Mail reference clients, which will run on Solaris workstations and Microsoft Windows PCs. These clients provide the best mobile and disconnected mail client solutions available in the market today.

The performance of Solstice Internet Mail Server v2.0 has also been significantly enhanced since the first release. Solstice Internet Mail Server v2.0 is the only Solaris mailbox format server that fully indexes large mailboxes for quick, random access. Solstice Internet Mail Server v2.0 takes advantage of this indexing to yield instantaneous access to the email message properties required by IMAP4. In addition, Solstice Internet Mail Server v2.0 leverages Solaris internals to minimize the use of virtual memory, which in turn maximizes the number of users the mail server can support. Users can expect the best IMAP4 access to the Solaris mailbox format in the industry.

Wide-Ranging Benefits

Solstice Internet Mail Server offers users the ability to:

Review and search all message attributes without downloading the message contents.
Selectively download the message body and individual attachments as necessary.
Access email at remote locations or while disconnected from the network.
Send and receive virtually any type of attachment.
Maintain more control over mailboxes and folders, especially in disconnected or low-bandwidth situations.

In addition, system administrators and information systems managers enjoy:

Greater network efficiency due to lower mail traffic.
More reliable transport -- no lost messages.
Support for multiple protocol mail clients from a single mail server.
Server-based management and administration of mailboxes.

Support for Internet Standards: IMAP4, MIME, POP3, SMTP

Solstice Internet Mail Server is based on open Internet standards:

IMAP4: Internet message access protocol version 4. This is the client/server protocol that provides cutting-edge support for mobile and disconnected users (RFC 1730).
POP3: post office protocol version 3. Used for support of popular mail clients such as Qualcomm's Eudora (RFC 1939).
MIME: multipurpose internet mail extensions. This has quickly become dominant because of its flexible and reliable performance for delivering binary multimedia mail attachments (RFC 2049).
SMTP: simple mail transfer protocol. This provides support for server-to-server message transport (RFC 821).

Support For Multiple Clients

Since IMAP4 is an open Internet protocol, Solstice Internet Mail Server interoperates cleanly with any compliant IMAP client.

An inventory of known software supporting IMAP is kept by the University of Washington at their IMAP Connection site: http://www.imap.org

Solstice Internet Mail Server also supports the earlier POP3 client/server protocol. This is used by popular Internet mail packages such as Eudora and is starting to be supported by many LAN-based mail systems such as Microsoft Exchange and Lotus cc:Mail.

Integrated IMAP, POP3, and /var/mail Mail

Solstice Internet Mail Server integrates IMAP, POP3, and /var/mail on a single server. Users may have a /var/mail client (such as Sun^TM Mailtool v3) at work and an IMAP client at home or on the road. The mailbox view is consistent whether local or remote.

Solstice Internet Mail Server also has the ability to translate Sun Mailtool v3 attachments to MIME attachments on the fly. Without this ability, attachments sent by Mailtool to an IMAP server would appear as very large text messages. This service is completely transparent to the end user.

Advanced Internet Messaging

Solstice Internet Mail Server works with /var/mail and Sendmail in the Solaris operating system to store and send mail messages via SMTP server-to-server. The mail server also works with Solaris NIS and NIS+ for naming services. Solstice Internet Mail Server is an easy upgrade to the mail capabilities of Solaris, offering fully supported commercial implementations of leading-edge Internet standards. Users can implement reliable, end-to-end Internet mail solutions with Solstice Internet Mail Server.

System Specifications

Platforms: SPARC^TM, 386, 486, and Pentium systems
Window System: X11R5/OPEN LOOK (OpenWindows^TM v3)
Supports: IMAP4 (RFC 1730), POP3 (RFC 1939), SMTP (RFC 821), MIME (RFC 2049)

IMAP4 Mail Client for Solstice Internet Mail Server

The Solstice Internet Mail Server uses IMAP4 to deliver advanced mobile and disconnected mail service.

The Solstice Internet Mail reference client is designed to take full advantage of this technology. Remote users download only mail headers. Users can then choose to download individual messages or attachments. This approach is much more efficient in a limited-bandwidth situation such as a dial-up modem.

The Solstice Internet Mail reference client also has the ability to record in disconnected mode and then resynchronize with the mail server upon reconnection with the network. No other mail clients available today have this ability.

Solstice Internet Mail Client also has the ability to provide powerful views of mail based on user-defined selection criteria.

Solstice Internet Mail v2.0 Reference Client

The Solstice Internet Mail v2.0 reference client is available to download free of charge. This IMAP4 email client is available for:

Solaris SPARC or Intel systems
Microsoft Windows 3.1x
Microsoft Windows NT
Microsoft Windows 95