The Way A Smtp Server Works

Did you ever think what works behind sending and receiving emails

? In reality, sending emails is such a mundane task that no one ever stops to think how this kind of communication is taking place in everyday life. The primary thing that is needed for email communication is an email server. The technology that works on the email server is pretty interesting.

Email communication happens with the help of servers like the smtp, pop3 and imap servers. The most popular mail client software is the MS Outlook and the Mozilla Thunderbird and also the X's mail by the Mac OS. The basic function of all these software packages is to download the mails from the inbox of mail servers like gmail, yahoo etc to the machine itself. The email communication happens with the client-server community. In layman's term, when a client wants to send mails, he needs to connect to the internet whose server is connected to another computer. That takes care of the hosting and serving of the web pages.

Whenever an email is sent, your computer connects to the mail server that is responsible for sending and receiving mails. This email server is known as the smtp server (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Each email has both the sender's as well as the receiver's mail address. The smtp locates the domain and sends the mail.

Each domain has its unique id, which is known as the Internet Protocol (IP Address). The internal link between the domain names of the IP address is stored in a base which is known as the Domain Name Registry. The SMTPserver gets in touch with the DNS server. It then sends the mail to the smtp server of the mail receiver. The mail is then taken over by the POP3 or the IMAP server.

The pop3 servers have all the email ids stored in them. As you already know that each mail id is associated with a given user name and password. If you receive a mail, you need to log in to check the mail. Unless you log in, the mail is stored in the POP3 server as well as in the inbox. Now, if an email client wants to connect to the pop3 server, then it requests permission to download the emails. Once the mails are downloaded, the pop3 mailboxes erase the mails from the server. Therefore, if you want to check the mail again, you need to down load it. In order to combat the problem, IMAP4 or the Internet Message Access Protocol Version was bought in, which keeps a mail copy in the email server. This makes it easier to access the mails from any whereabouts. There is also the Multipurpose Internet Email Extensions or MIME that supports the attachments of video and audio with the email.

This is how an apparent email sending and receiving occurs. Therefore the next time that you send a simple mail, you would give it a thought for sure that however simple it seems, it is certainly a lot more complicated than that!

by: Luis Henry

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