pop3d email download timeout question

[Joe Hrbek]

Every now and then I have a problem with large email messages in user's
inboxes.  Most of our users use the pop3 daemon to access their mail.
Subsequently, this isn't an issue if they use IMAP.  IMAP seems to be able
to pull the message down just fine.  Anyway, most of the time, large
messages can be delivered to the user through pop3 just fine, but sometimes,
larger messages will cause microsoft outlook/outlook express to timeout,
resulting in the generic, "server timeout" error the outlook clients
generate.  Also, the users are connecting over a DSL connection to the
server which sits on a t-3, so bandwidth shouldn't be an issue.

I've scoured through the logs and I have been unable to find an explanation
for this behavior.  I've also tried increasing the timeout period in
outlook, but that doesn't seem to matter.  It just seems to hang on large
messages sometimes.  Some (most?) might suggest to move away from pop3 and
goto IMAP, but that isn't an option for us right now for a few reasons,
extenuating reasons actually.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem and if
so, what steps were taken to remedy this?  Or, is this a bug with the pop3d
daemon?  I'm running Simon Matter's RPM: Cyrus POP3
v2.1.13-Invoca-RPM-2.1.13-3 on redhat 8.

Thanks in advance,

-joe