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Smashing the BlackBerry myths

Posted on 28 Jan 2010 at 11:34

Paul Ockenden smashes some common myths about the way BlackBerrys handle email

I recently came across some interesting comments on the PC Pro blog. Jon Bray had posted his initial impressions of the BlackBerry Storm 2, and someone responded: “POP3/IMAP/SMTP native support? If not, forget it”.

Someone else replied “It’s a BlackBerry. They always have full POP3/IMAP/SMTP support”, and a third added “It needs to have exchange support instead of that crap of a BlackBerry server”. All completely wide of the mark.

I’ve noticed more and more people using BlackBerrys outside of business or commuter environments – supermarket queues, pubs, pretty much everywhere. RIM seems to have broken through to the consumer market, while continuing to gain traction among businesses.

Many folks have no idea what makes a BlackBerry tick, especially regarding email

You might assume from this ubiquity that users understand how BlackBerrys work, but judging from those responses on Jon’s blog this clearly isn’t the case – many folks have no idea what makes a BlackBerry tick, especially regarding email. That’s a shame, because despite RIM’s push towards applications and social-networking clients, email is still the raison d’être for BlackBerry. So, let’s dispel a few myths.

Mail confusion

First, there are no native POP3, IMAP or SMTP clients on a standard BlackBerry (there are kludgy third-party email clients for download, but you’ll rarely see one working). The mail client supplied on a BlackBerry doesn’t communicate using standard protocols: when your phone is first powered up, it opens a permanent connection to RIM’s own local Network Operations Centre or NOC.

You can witness the point at which this connection is made, because the coverage indicator changes from “grps” to “GPRS”. This phone-to-NOC connection runs via a packet data network between phone and mobile network (using a dedicated BlackBerry APN), and then from the mobile network down a leased line directly into RIM’s local NOC.

The mail client on the phone essentially just sits there displaying what’s been sent to it from the NOC over this private data connection, and there’s no POP3, IMAP or SMTP traffic to or from it. This special APN and NOC infrastructure is why you pay a few quid more each month to run a BlackBerry than for a phone with a conventional email client.

What happens next depends on whether you’re using the BlackBerry Internet System BIS or the BlackBerry Enterprise System or BES. You’re more likely to find BIS on consumer and SME devices, whereas you’ll find BES in corporations running their own mail servers. (When I talk about BES, I’m including what RIM calls BlackBerry Professional Software, which is just BES re-packaged for smaller companies.)

Let’s take a look at BIS first, since it’s the easier to understand. The connection via the mobile network to the local NOC is unencrypted, which is going to surprise a lot of people because RIM always touts BlackBerry as a secure system. Lots of websites claim that this device-to-NOC link under BIS runs over 128-bit SSL, which isn’t true.

If security is important, you really need to invest in BES rather than BIS. That said, the dedicated APN and direct connection between wireless carrier and BlackBerry NOC mean it would take a determined effort to sniff such traffic, and the link between the BlackBerry NOC and remote POP3 and IMAP servers (for incoming mail) or SMTP servers (outgoing) will usually be unencrypted anyway, so it would be far easier to intercept traffic there.

Email Hoover

But what of the NOC itself? In a BIS setup it essentially acts as a big email Hoover. Using a config screen accessed either via a web browser on your PC, or the handheld itself, you supply usernames and passwords for all your POP3 and IMAP accounts, and then every 15 minutes or so it will trawl them and suck in any new mail. These are “pushed” directly to your BlackBerry, and if BIS detects that you’re having an email conversation with someone, it will poll more frequently than 15 minutes to keep synchronisation close to real-time. RIM works directly with a few email providers to provide real-time delivery, without any polling cycle: these include AOL, Yahoo!, Gmail, Windows Live/Hotmail/MSN, Hostopia and GoDaddy.

Emails sent from the device are pushed out immediately via the NOC. So, for example, if I send a BIS email from my BlackBerry, the recipient will see a set of headers such as this:

Received: from smtp04.bis.eu.blackberry.com (HELO smtp04.bis.eu.blackberry.com) (206.53.150.100) by mail.test.co.uk with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service) id QV566KX4; Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:29:16 -0000

Or this:

Received: from bda048.bisx.produk.on.blackberry (bda048.bisx.produk.on.blackberry [172.24.224.108]) by srs.bis.eu.blackberry.com (8.13.7 TEAMON/8.13.7) with ESMTP id n9SASLxh009391 for testy@test.co.uk; Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:29:13 GMT

As you can see, this mail didn’t go anywhere near the SMTP server that would normally be used for sending, although that’s only true for standard POP3 or IMAP setups. For providers such as Gmail, for example – to whose mail servers RIM has a direct connection – outgoing mail does go via the provider, so they can store a copy in your “sent items” folder.

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