Quick back story - I have an app I've been experimenting with based on the Simple POP3 Email class below. I receive live exports from a CAD system to an email account. I use this Simple POP3 application to download the email(s), parse the content, and feed that to another program.
Simple POP3 Email Class[
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So I have a couple questions. Since I need the "live" data to be moving ASAP, I prefer an email "push" application where I would automatically receive emails as they come in. However, poor network architecture frequently disrupts connections, and so I have been experimenting with this type of a setup where I just poll the email account about every 5 seconds, parse new emails, and delete them from the account. Q1: Is it considered "bad practice" to poll an email address about 12 times a minute?
Next, I am feeding this CAD info to many different workstations in many locations, so the email app will run on as many as 2-dozen computers. knowing that I'll never get multiple email clients to poll the same email account (because the account is locked when one client has access), I could specify a different email account for each workstation. Q2: (kind of like Q1) Is it bad practice to continuously poll for emails multiple times a minute from multiple email accounts on your domain? Does that drastically diminish services that my hosting company is providing?
Everything I've tried so far seems like this will work, I'm just worried about all the email requests looking like spam or reducing performance yet knowing that maybe this is going on constantly across the internet and my ~200 requests a minute would be a grain of sand on a beach. Or maybe I'm doing this all wrong and I need to approach another way.
Just looking for some thoughts on this type of architecture. Thanks!
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