Introduction
The mail server can be compared with your mailman and it will be observed that the mail server is quite equivalent to your neighborhood mailman. All the emails which have been sent go through number of mail servers till it reach to the final recipients. It passes through various series, although it has been seen by the recipient instantly in blink of the eye, whereas it is the fact that during this transfer, complex series took place. If the series of such mail servers do not exist, one would not be able to send the mails to persons having different email domain address. If it matches with the domain address of yours’, than only you would be able to send the emails successfully .
Following steps can be used to define sending of an email :-
Step No. 1
First of all the massage is to be composed. After hitting the send button to your client whether it is Gmail or outlook express, it will connect to the SMTP server of your domain. There are many names associated with this server, a general example is smtp.example.com
Step No. 2
Communication is done between email client of yours’ and SMTP server, providing it email address of your and the recipient, body of the message and any other attachment.
Step No. 3
The email address of the recipient is processed by the SMTP server and its domain especially. It the name of the domain is like as one the sender has, message is then routed over directly to POP3 of domain or server IMAP. In this case there is no need of routing between the servers. In case where the domains are different, SMTP server communicates with servers of other domain.
Step No. 4
The SMTP server of the sender has to link with DNS or the name of domain server, to find server of the recipient. The name of the email of the recipient is taken by the DNS and it is translated into IP address. The SMTP server of the sender cannot properly route email alone with the domain name. The IP address is considered as one of the unique numbers which is tasked to all the computers which are connected to internet. The work would efficiently be done by the mail outgoing servers by knowing information like these.
Step No. 5
The IP address of recipient lies with the SMTP server now, which can be connected to SMTP server. This generally is not done directly, despite the message is being routed along with number of series SMTP servers which is unrelated. This process is done till the message is arrived at its final destination.
Step No. 6
The SMTP server of the recipient scans all incoming messages. If the user name and domain is recognized by SMTP, the messages forwarded to POP3 of the domain or the server of IMAP. It is then placed in queue of send mail, till it is allowed by the email client of recipient for downloading. The message, at this point, can be visualized by recipient.
Functions of Mail Server
Mail is received by the email server from other MTA. MTA is an agent of mail user and is also called agent of mail submission. It has also details of transmission defined by the SMTP. When a mail is received by an MTA and recipient of mail does not host locally, mail is then communicated to other MTA . Whenever the message is receives, add namely, “received” traced at the header of message. This depicts that all the massages are handled in the inbox of the recipient on the top header of message. This is a valuable feature of MTAs and let the administrators to look into the matter that optimal path is taken or otherwise .
The infrastructure of mail server is comprised of many components which work with each other in order to send, receive, relay, deliver and store the email.
Following standard protocols regarding internet are being used by the workload of mail server in order to send and retrieve email :
SMTP i.e. simple mail transfer protocol. The purpose of this standard protocol is to send the email.
POP i.e. post office protocol. The main purpose is to retrieve the email.
IMAPV4 i.e. messages access protocol version four. This standards is also being used for to retrieve the emails.
An MTA or a mail server is considered as application which is chiefly sued for transferring of mail from a user to some other user. It is termed as post office electronically for the emails. Both receiving and sending emails are dealt by this application by involving the standard protocols like SMTP or ESMTP for purpose of sending the mails. On the other hand protocols like POP3 and IMAP can be used for receiving mails .
Mail server better knows that where the email message is to be delivered before communication. The email address will be examined by the server which has been specified in the address bar at receiver end. The domain name regarding respective email address is extracted by the mail server to locate POP3 server as communicated by computer of receiver.
After the sign of @, the name of the domain can be found in any email address. For instance, if the address of an email is , then the name of the domain is xyz.com. Mail server, by utilizing this name of the domain as address, will search that the message is to be delivered to which of the mail server on internet .
Conclusion
Generally it is referred as mail server, but it should be termed as e-mail server and a computer within the network which works as post office virtually. Any mail server is generally comprised of an area for storage, wherein the mails are stored for the local users, database of accounts of users which mail server will deal and recognize locally, and the modules are communicated that handle actually transfer of the massages from one user to the other on email clients and mail servers .
There is a combination of work between mail server and other programs in order to make up the system which is generally known as the messaging system. The messaging systems comprised of all applications which are considered as important to keep moving the email as it is supposed to be. When email message is sent, the e-mail program forwards the same text to mail server, which is subsequently forwarded to other mail server or on same server’s holding area for later forwarding the same. For this purpose, SMTP or ESMTP is being used in order to send email or POP3 / IMAP to receive email .
References
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