PMMail/2 and Broken Telephone Connectinons

[John Angelico]

On Wed, 14 Jul 1999 01:02:34 -0700, Marty Abrego wrote:

>On Wed, 14 Jul 1999 08:09:12 +0000, Winfried Tilanus wrote:
>
>>>Strange... I just tested this by emailing myself a file with a
>>>sizable attachment (so I have time to break the connection).  After I
>>>started retrieving it, I let it reach 10% and then pulled the plug on
>>>the DSL modem.  After 30 seconds, or so, I plugged it back in.  After
>>>about 30 more seconds, PM Mail picked up where it left off -- no
>>>problem at all.
>>
>>I might be that resuming or not resuming depends on wether you get the
>>same ip addres or not.
>
>That's true.  I have a static IP address.

Well, I'll be danged! 

As per the request from someone (oops, name escapes me now) I tested PMMail by breaking my 
connection during a download of mail - I simply shutdown iLink, then re-started it.

This is what happened:
1. PMMail stopped of course with "Deleting message 17 of 22" in the status line.
2. When I restarted, I "restarted" PMMail downloads by clicking on Retrieve Mail
3. PMMail did not respond. [I stand partially corrected]  
4. When I shut down PMMail and restarted it from scratch, it re-conneceted and downloaded all 22 
messages again.
5. As someone else pointed out, with dynamic IP addresses successful resume depends on getting 
the same IP address from your ISP - an unlikely event. With static addresses there is no problem.

Therefore, I offer my analysis of my results as follows:
1. I have PMMail set to check for mail every 5 minutes.
2. If I lose a connection between downloads and PMMail doesn't know about it (iLink redials and 
reconnects OK), then I "see" no problem
3. If I lose a connection during a download and I get the same IP address when I redial (occasionally 
may happen late at night if I'm the only crazy fool online at my small and friendly ISP), then I "see" 
an automatic resume by PMMail
4. If I don't get the same IP address, I get a complete restart of my download and duplicate 
messages. THAT explains why I have occasionally had duplicates in my Inbox and Filter folders.
5. At this stage, I have to modify my statement about PMMail gracefully handling dropouts to the 
extent that under certain circumstances I woudl agree with Bob & Ike but in other circumstances as 
shown here, I agree with the original complaint - there is a problem in there. BUT I am not enough of 
a programmer to say where it lies and who "should" fix it.

Hope this has helped someone.

 
Best regards
John Angelico
OS/2 SIG
Melbourne PC User Group Inc.
Email: talldad@melbpc.org.au or talldad@kepl.com.au
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