Beware the SBS POP Connector

Microsoft provides in Small Business Server (both SBS 2003 and SBS 2008 versions) a POP Connector.  This enables the server to collect email from user POP mail accounts.

The purpose of providing the connector is to enable an easy transition for an organisation embarking on its first server, and it does exactly that.  However, it is not recommended as a long term solution for receiving email.  The correct configuration is to point the domain email in DNS at the server direct.

However, some organisations seem to treat the POP Connector as a permanent solution - perhaps they were never advised against this, and there are disadvantags in running the system this way.  The POP Connector by default collects email every 15 minutes. This is in itself a drawback but the real problems come if all the email does not download in the time before the next scheduled collection.  If this happens, the download is abandoned and started again - and if the emails are really large and/or the internet connection slow, the process never completes.  The situation can be made worse (in SBS208) by reducing the pickup schedule to 10 minutes.

So, the message is to configure the SBS server to receive email direct at the earliest opportunity, and to treat the POP Connector as the transition tool it is meant to be.