My own in-home email server question

[Heeter]

Hi Guys,

I would like to know if I can setup my own email server. Basically, one computer recieves the emails from my ISP's email server, from which I can view from anyone of my computers with the Thunderbird client on each. I would like to be able to read new and existing emails from any computer in house. All computers in house are home-networked together with a central file server computer using mapped drives, to which all are behind a router.

Can this be done?

Thanks in advance.

Heeter

 

[vern]

Yes. This is similar to what I do.

I have a Linux box fetch all the mails from my ISP's POP server and other mail servers using fetchmail. I have filters put on those mails to filter out any penis enlargement ads. Fetchmail just drops all the mail it got into a user's inbox. I use Outlook, so I just get the mail through POP with my linux server as my POP server.

If you want to view mail all around your house, you could use IMAP instead of POP ... or if you need to use POP, leave the mail on the server instead of deleting them.

So basically the tools you need is a Linux box, fetchmail, POP3/IMAP server ... both are common in Linux distros.

If you have to do this in Windows though ... then I can't help you there.

 

[Heeter]

I would like to keep it to Windows. I would to use my file server as the email fetcher from my ISP's pop accounts.

What IMAP be useful for my situation?

Heeter

 

[cryogenic]

Here's a good POP3 server for Windows, free for up to 5 users. I've used it before and it was pretty decent. It does more than just POP/SMTP though.
http://www.software602.com/products/ls/

 

[vern]

If you want it strictly for Windows, all you really need is a program that automatically checks POP servers for you and downloads mail and deposit it in a local POP program.

IMAP would be helpful because you can syncronize folders among other things and you did mention wanting to read/view existing mails. IMAP would do just that.