Efficiency Characteristics of LEAP

All LEAP protocols are designed with efficiency in mind. In this section we describe the efficiency characteristics of EMSD, the LEAP e-mail protocol. Other LEAP protocols deliver similar efficiency benefits.

Most existing Internet e-mail protocols are designed with simplicity, and continuity with SMTP traditions, as two of the primary design requirements. These requirements are in conflict with efficiency of data transfer, and for this reason most existing Internet e-mail protocols are not efficient.

EMSD, on the other hand, has been designed with efficiency as its primary requirement. For this reason, EMSD is a great deal more efficient than existing Internet e-mail protocols.

A detailed efficiency study of the LEAP protocols is provided in the article entitled Efficiency of EMSD [2] within The LEAP Manifesto. That article presents various efficiency studies which compare the efficiency of EMSD to other e-mail protocols such as SMTP, POP and IMAP, and which demonstrate the efficiency advantages of EMSD.

In this section we provide a brief summary of EMSD's efficiency characteristics. A comparison of the efficiency of the EMSD protocol to other messaging protocols is provided in Figure 2, which shows the delivery traffic overhead for EMSD and three other e-mail protocols: SMTP, IMAP and POP.

Figure 2: Protocol Efficiency Comparison

As the figure shows, EMSD is much more efficient than SMTP, POP and IMAP. For submission and delivery of short e-mail messages, EMSD is up to five times more efficient than the ubiquitous SMTP e-mail messaging protocols, both in terms of the number of packets transmitted, and in terms of number of bytes transmitted. Even with pipelining and other possible optimizations of SMTP, EMSD remains up to three times more efficient than SMTP, both in terms of the number of packets transmitted, and in terms of number of bytes transmitted.

By minimizing the network traffic required to send and receive messages, EMSD meets the needs of the mobile communicator. The extreme efficiency of the EMSD protocol translates into bandwidth efficiency, which in turn translates into:

• Efficient use of carrier bandwidth, and therefore increased capacity for network operators
• Longer battery life for mobile phones, PDAs and other wireless Internet devices
• Cheaper network usage costs for the end-user
• Reduced latency for the end-user
• Improved support for marginal coverage areas