About one month after I was born in 1983 a company called MCI introduced their "Electronic mail" system. Originally a BBS-style system, where users dialed into MCI to edit, send, and receive mail. Users could send electronic mail to each other, send a physical letters, and even manage their telexes without ever leaving the comfort of whatever room they had with a telephone and an acoustic coupler.

It became necessary to have offline email clients. Rather than use SMTP or POP they came up with MEP2 (Message Exchange Protocol 2). MEP2 combines the functionality of SMTP, POP, and some LDAP features together.

In this talk I will discuss the history of MCI, MEP2 protocol, and the mail server I implemented that can speak it.