Java Programming

Hi,

I'm pretty new to java and even though I know the language enough to avoid syntax errors, when it comes to doing something as involved as building a mail server I have no idea. So I was hoping, people in the know - i.e this community - would help me out. So the task is this - building a POP3 based mail server, with replication, distributed search and indexing, and failure recovery. Of course all of this has to be done in Java. So where do I begin ? Any ideas at all would be really helpful. At this point, I would just like to get the framework :

- development tools
- reading material (API manuals, protocol manuals, etc) .

setup and at least begin to think about handling basic functionality like:

- create account
- delete account
- login
- check mail.

The intricate details of distributed servers, and replication, I'm leaving for later. Thank you very much for any input that any of you might have. Really appreciated !