How Email Works

PCTEHow Email Works

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How E-Mail Works?

IntroductionElectronic mail, commonly calledemailore-mail, is a method of exchangingdigitalmessages across theInternetor othercomputer networks. Email systems are based on astore-and-forwardmodel in which emailserver computersystems accept, forward, deliver and store messages on behalf of users, who only need to connect to the email infrastructure, typically ane-mail server, with a network-enabled device for the duration of message submission or retrieval. Originally, email was transmitted directly from one user's device to another user's computer, which required both computers to be online at the same time.An electronic mail message consists of two components, the messageheader, and the messagebody, which is the email's content. The message header contains control information, including, minimally, an originator'semail addressand one or more recipient addresses. Usually additional information is added, such as a subject header field.Originally a text-only communications medium, email was extended to carry multi-media content attachments, which was standardized inRFC 2045throughRFC 2049, collectively called,Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions(MIME).The foundation for today's global Internet email services reaches back to the earlyARPANETand standards for encoding of messages were proposed as early as 1973 (RFC 561). An e-mail sent in the early 1970s looked very similar to one sent on the Internet today. Conversion from the ARPANET to the Internet in the early 1980s produced the core of the current services.Network-based email was initially exchanged on the ARPANET in extensions to theFile Transfer Protocol(FTP), but is today carried by theSimple Mail Transfer Protocol(SMTP), first published asInternet standard10 (RFC 821) in 1982. In the process of transporting email messages between systems, SMTP communicates delivery parameters using a messageenvelopeseparately from the message (header and body) itself.There are severalspellingvariations that are occasionally the cause of vehement disagreement. emailis the form required byIETFRequest for Commentsand working groupsand is also recognized in most dictionaries. e-mailis a form recommended by some prominent journalistic and technicalstyle guides. mailwas the form used in the original RFC. The service is referred to asmailand a single piece of electronic mail is called amessage.OriginElectronic mail predates the inception of theInternet, and was in fact a crucial tool in creating it.MITfirst demonstrated theCompatible Time-Sharing System(CTSS) in 1961.[17]It allowed multiple users to log into theIBM 7094[18]from remote dial-up terminals, and to store files online on disk. This new ability encouraged users to share information in new ways. E-mail started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of atime-sharingmainframe computerto communicate. Although the exact history is murky, among the first systems to have such a facility wereSDC'sQ32and MIT's CTSS.Host-based mail systemsThe original email systems allowed communication only between users who logged into the one host or "mainframe", but this could be hundreds or thousands of users within a company or university. By 1966 (or earlier, it is possible that theSAGEsystem had something similar some time before), such systems allowed email between different companies as long as they ran compatible operating systems, but not to other dissimilar systems.Examples includeBITNET,IBM PROFS,Digital Equipment CorporationALL-IN-1and the original Unixmail.LAN-based mail systemsFrom the early 1980s networkedpersonal computersonLANsbecame increasingly important.Serverbased systems similar to the earlier mainframe systems developed, and again initially allowed communication only between users logged into the same server infrastructure, but these also could generally be linked between different companies as long as they ran the same email system and (proprietary) protocol.Examples includecc:Mail,Lantastic,WordPerfect Office,Microsoft Mail,Banyan VINESandLotus Notes- with various vendors supplying gateway software to link these incompatible systems.Attempts at interoperability Novellbriefly championed the openMHSprotocol but abandoned it after purchasing the non-MHS WordPerfect Office (renamed Groupwise) uucpwas used as an open "glue" between differing mail systems TheColoured Book protocolsonUKacademic networks until 1992 X.400in the early 1990s was mandated for government use underGOSIPbut almost immediately abandoned by all but a few in favour ofInternetSMTPThe rise of ARPANET mailThe ARPANETcomputer networkmade a large contribution to the development of e-mail. There is one report that indicates experimental inter-system e-mail transfers began shortly after its creation in 1969.Ray Tomlinsonis credited by some as having sent the first email, initiating the use of the "@" sign to separate the names of the user and the user's machine in 1971, when he sent a message from oneDigital Equipment CorporationDEC-10computer to another DEC-10. The two machines were placed next to each other. The ARPANET significantly increased the popularity of e-mail, and it became thekiller appof the ARPANET.Email FormatInternet e-mail messages consist of two major sections: Header Structured intofieldssuch as summary, sender, receiver, and other information about the e-mail. Body The message itself as unstructured text; sometimes containing asignature blockat the end. This is exactly the same as the body of a regular letter.The header is separated from the body by a blank line.Message headerEach message has exactly oneheader, which is structured intofields. Each field has a name and a value.RFC 5322specifies the precise syntax.Informally, each line of text in the header that begins with aprintable characterbegins a separate field. The field name starts in the first character of the line and ends before the separator character ":". The separator is then followed by the field value (the "body" of the field). The value is continued onto subsequent lines if those lines have a space or tab as their first character. Field names and values are restricted to 7-bitASCIIcharacters. Non-ASCII values may be represented using MIMEencoded words.Header fieldsThe message header should include at least the following fields: From: Thee-mail address, and optionally the name of the author(s). In many e-mail clients not changeable except through changing account settings. To: The e-mail address(es), and optionally name(s) of the message's recipient(s). Indicates primary recipients (multiple allowed), for secondary recipients see Cc: and Bcc: below. Subject: A brief summary of the topic of the message.Certain abbreviationsare commonly used in the subject, including"RE:" and "FW:". Date: The local time and date when the message was written. Like theFrom:field, many email clients fill this in automatically when sending. The recipient's client may then display the time in the format and time zone local to him/her. Message-ID: Also an automatically generated field; used to prevent multiple delivery.Messege Body

Content encodingE-mail was originally designed for 7-bitASCII.[26]Much e-mail software is8-bit cleanbut must assume it will communicate with 7-bit servers and mail readers. TheMIMEstandard introduced character set specifiers and two content transfer encodings to enable transmission of non-ASCII data:quoted printablefor mostly 7 bit content with a few characters outside that range andbase64for arbitrary binary data. The8BITMIMEextension was introduced to allow transmission of mail without the need for these encodings but manymail transport agentsstill do not support it fully. In some countries, several encoding schemes coexist; as the result, by default, the message in a non-Latin alphabet language appears in non-readable form (the only exception is coincidence, when the sender and receiver use the same encoding scheme). Therefore, for internationalcharacter sets,Unicodeis growing in popularity.Plain text and HTMLMost modern graphice-mail clientsallow the use of eitherplain textorHTMLfor the message body at the option of the user. HTML e-mail messages often include an automatically-generated plain text copy as well, for compatibility reasons.Advantages of HTML include the ability to include in-line links and images, set apart previous messages inblock quotes, wrap naturally on any display, use emphasis such asunderlinesanditalics, and changefontstyles. Disadvantages include the increased size of the email, privacy concerns aboutweb bugs, abuse of HTML email as a vector forphishingattacks and the spread ofmalicious software. How Email Works Step A: Sender creates and sends an emailThe originating sender creates an email in their Mail User Agent (MUA) and clicks 'Send'. The MUA is the application the originating sender uses to compose and read email, such as Eudora, Outlook, etc.

Step B: Sender's MDA/MTA routes the emailThe sender's MUA transfers the email to a Mail Delivery Agent (MDA). Frequently, the sender's MTA also handles the responsibilities of an MDA. Several of the most common MTAs do this, including sendmail and qmail (which Kavi uses).The MDA/MTA accepts the email, then routes it to local mailboxes or forwards it if it isn't locally addressed. In our diagram, an MDA forwards the email to an MTA and it enters the first of a series of "network clouds," labeled as a "Company Network" cloud.Step C: Network CloudAn email can encounter a network cloud within a large company or ISP, or the largest network cloud in existence: the Internet. The network cloud may encompass a multitude of mail servers, DNS servers, routers, lions, tigers, bears (wolves!) and other devices and services too numerous to mention. These are prone to be slow when processing an unusually heavy load, temporarily unable to receive an email when taken down for maintenance, and sometimes may not have identified themselves properly to the Internet through the Domain Name System (DNS) so that other MTAs in the network cloud are unable to deliver mail as addressed. These devices may be protected by firewalls, spam filters and malware detection software that may bounce or even delete an email. When an email is deleted by this kind of software, it tends to fail silently, so the sender is given no information about where or when the delivery failure occurred.Email service providers and other companies that process a large volume of email often have their own, private network clouds. These organizations commonly have multiple mail servers, and route all email through a central gateway server (i.e., mail hub) that redistributes mail to whichever MTA is available. Email on these secondary MTAs must usually wait for the primary MTA (i.e., the designated host for that domain) to become available, at which time the secondary mail server will transfer its messages to the primary MTA.

Step D: Email QueueThe email in the diagram is addressed to someone at another company, so it enters an email queue with other outgoing email messages. If there is a high volume of mail in the queueeither because there are many messages or the messages are unusually large, or boththe message will be delayed in the queue until the MTA processes the messages ahead of it.Step E: MTA to MTA TransferWhen transferring an email, the sending MTA handles all aspects of mail delivery until the message has been either accepted or rejected by the receiving MTA. As the email clears the queue, it enters the Internet network cloud, where it is routed along a host-to-host chain of servers. Each MTA in the Internet network cloud needs to "stop and ask directions" from the Domain Name System (DNS) in order to identify the next MTA in the delivery chain. The exact route depends partly on server availability and mostly on which MTA can be found to accept email for the domain specified in the address. Most email takes a path that is dependent on server availability, so a pair of messages originating from the same host and addressed to the same receiving host could take different paths. These days, it's mostly spammers that specify any part of the path, deliberately routing their message through a series of relay servers in an attempt to obscure the true origin of the message.To find the recipient's IP address and mailbox, the MTA must drill down through the Domain Name System (DNS), which consists of a set of servers distributed across the Internet. Beginning with the root nameservers at the top-level domain (.tld), then domain nameservers that handle requests for domains within that .tld, and eventually to nameservers that know about the local domain.Step F: Firewalls, Spam and Virus FiltersThe transfer process described in the last step is somewhat simplified. An email may be transferred to more than one MTA within a network cloud and is likely to be passed to at least one firewall before it reaches it's destination.An email encountering a firewall may be tested by spam and virus filters before it is allowed to pass inside the firewall. These filters test to see if the message qualifies as spam or malware. If the message contains malware, the file is usually quarantined and the sender is notified. If the message is identified as spam, it will probably be deleted without notifying the sender.Spam is difficult to detect because it can assume so many different forms, so spam filters test on a broad set of criteria and tend to misclassify a significant number of messages as spam, particularly messages from mailing lists. When an email from a list or other automated source seems to have vanished somewhere in the network cloud, the culprit is usually a spam filter at the receiver's ISP or company. This explained in greater detail in Virus Scanning and Spam Blocking.DeliveryIn the diagram, the email makes it past the hazards of the spam trapper filter, and is accepted for delivery by the receiver's MTA. The MTA calls a local MDA to deliver the mail to the correct mailbox, where it will sit until it is retrieved by the recipient's MUA.Difference between Snail mail and EmailThere are a number of differences between writing and sending an ordinary "snail mail" letter and an e-mail message. However, a lot of these differences are probably rather obvious, but they will still be examined.The first difference between these two forms of communication is that there is less potential for pain to be involved when a person sends an e-mail. It doesn't take as much in the way of motor skills to type an e-mail message as it does to handwrite a "snail mail" letter. Of course, in this day and age of computers, people may already be typing letters in word processing programs instead of writing them out by hand.The next difference between "snail mail" and e-mail is the speed in which a message can be delivered. With an e-mail message, you can click on the "send" button, and the message is sent instantaneously. The recipient of the e-mail message can receive the letter a lot sooner than when a "snail mail" letter is sent. While the e-mail message can be sent right away, the "snail mail" letter has to be taken to a mailbox or a post office, and it can take several days for a letter to reach its intended destination.Another difference between the two kinds of mail is cost. For an e-mail message, the only cost that is incurred is a person's monthly bill for their internet connection. With "snail mail" letters, people have to use a stamp on each letter they write. As of this writing, a stamp costs forty-one cents. So, assuming a person who has internet access sends five "snail mail" letters in one month, then that person will be paying $2.05 in addition to their monthly internet bill.Protocols UsedInternet Message Access ProtocolThe Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is one of the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval, the other being the Post Office Protocol (POP) Virtually all modern e-mail clients and mail servers support both protocols as a means of transferring e-mail messages from a server.The Internet Message Access Protocol (commonly known as IMAP, and previously called Internet Mail Access Protocol, Interactive Mail Access Protocol , and Interim Mail Access Protocol is an Application Layer Internet protocol that allows an e-mail client to access e-mail on a remote mail server. The current version, IMAP version 4 revision IMAP supports both on-line and off-line modes of operationPost Office ProtocolIn computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection. POP and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) are the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval. Virtually all modern e-mail clients and servers support both. The POP protocol has been developed through several versions, with version 3 (POP3) being the current standard. POP3 is used for most webmail services such as Gmail and Yahoo.POP supports simple download-and-delete requirements for access to remote mailboxes . Although most POP clients have an option to leave mail on server after download, e-mail clients using POP generally connect, retrieve all messages, store them on the user's PC as new messages, delete them from the server, and then disconnect.Simple Mail Transfer ProtocolSimple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard for electronic mail (e-mail) transmission across Internet Protocol (IP) networks. SMTP is the protocol in widespread use today. SMTP is specified for outgoing mail transport and uses TCP port 25.While electronic mail servers and other mail transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages, user-level client mail applications typically only use SMTP for sending messages to a mail server for relaying. For receiving messages, client applications usually use either the Post Office Protocol (POP) or the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) or a proprietary system (such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes/Domino) to access their mail box accounts on a mail server.Uses of EmailIn societyThere are numerous ways in which people have changed the way they communicate in the last 50 years; e-mail is certainly one of them. Traditionally, social interaction in the local community was the basis for communication face to face. Yet, today face-to-face meetings are no longer the primary way to communicate as one can use a landline telephone, mobile phones, fax services, or any number of the computer mediated communications such as e-mail.Research has shown that people actively use e-mail to maintain core social networks, particularly when others live at a distance. However, contradictory to previous research, the results suggest that increases in Internet usage are associated with decreases in other modes of communication, with proficiency of Internet and e-mail use serving as a mediating factor in this relationship. With the introduction of chat messengers and video conference, there are more ways to communicate. FlamingFlaming occurs when a person sends a message with angry or antagonistic content. Flaming is assumed to be more common today because of the ease and impersonality of e-mail communications: confrontations in person or via telephone require direct interaction, where social norms encourage civility, whereas typing a message to another person is an indirect interaction, so civility may be forgotten. Flaming is generally looked down upon by Internet communities as it is considered rude and non-productive. E-mail bankruptcyAlso known as "e-mail fatigue", e-mail bankruptcy is when a user ignores a large number of e-mail messages after falling behind in reading and answering them. The reason for falling behind is often due to information overload and a general sense there is so much information that it is not possible to read it all. As a solution, people occasionally send a boilerplate message explaining that the e-mail inbox is being cleared out. Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig is credited with coining this term, but he may only have popularized it. In businessE-mail was widely accepted by the business community as the first broad electronic communication medium and was the first e-revolution in business communication. E-mail is very simple to understand and like postal mail, e-mail solves two basic problems of communication: logistics and synchronization.LAN based email is also an emerging form of usage for business. It not only allows the business user to download mail when offline, it also provides the small business user to have multiple users e-mail ID's with just one e-mail connection. The problem of logistics: Much of the business world relies upon communications between people who are not physically in the same building, area or even country; setting up and attending an in-person meeting, telephone call, or conference call can be inconvenient, time-consuming, and costly. E-mail provides a way to exchange information between two or more people with no set-up costs and that is generally far less expensive than physical meetings or phone calls. The problem of synchronisation: With real time communication by meetings or phone calls, participants have to work on the same schedule, and each participant must spend the same amount of time in the meeting or call. E-mail allows asynchrony: each participant may control their schedule independently. Problems Loss of context: which means that the context is lost forever; there is no way to get the text back. Information in context (as in a newspaper) is much easier and faster to understand than unedited and sometimes unrelated fragments of information. Communicating in context can only be achieved when both parties have a full understanding of the context and issue in question. Information overload: E-mail is a push technologythe sender controls who receives the information. Convenient availability of mailing lists and use of "copy all" can lead to people receiving unwanted or irrelevant information of no use to them. Inconsistency: E-mail can duplicate information. This can be a problem when a large team is working on documents and information while not in constant contact with the other members of their team. Attachment size limitationEmail messages may have one or more attachments. Attachments serve the purpose of delivering binary or text files of unspecified size. In principle there is no technical intrinsic restriction in the SMTP protocol limiting the size or number of attachments. In practice, however, email service providers implement various limitations on the permissible size of files or the size of an entire message.Furthermore, due to technical reasons, often a small attachment can increase in size when sent, which can be confusing to senders when trying to assess whether they can or cannot send a file by e-mail, and this can result in their message being rejected.As larger and larger file sizes are being created and traded, many users are either forced to upload and download their files using an FTP server, or more popularly, use online file sharing facilities or services, usually over web-friendly HTTP, in order to send and receive them. Information overloadA December 2007 New York Times blog post described information overload as "a $650 Billion Drag on the Economy",and the New York Times reported in April 2008 that "E-MAIL has become the bane of some peoples professional lives" due to information overload, yet "none of the current wave of high-profile Internet start-ups focused on e-mail really eliminates the problem of e-mail overload because none helps us prepare replies".Technology investors reflect similar concerns. The email services are trying to provide maximum email inbox space to save the large size documents(attachments). Spamming and computer virusesThe usefulness of e-mail is being threatened by four phenomena: e-mail bombardment, spamming, phishing, and e-mail worms.Spamming is unsolicited commercial (or bulk) e-mail. Because of the very low cost of sending e-mail, spammers can send hundreds of millions of e-mail messages each day over an inexpensive Internet connection. Hundreds of active spammers sending this volume of mail results in information overload for many computer users who receive voluminous unsolicited e-mail each day. E-mail worms use e-mail as a way of replicating themselves into vulnerable computers. Although the first e-mail worm affected UNIX computers, the problem is most common today on the more popular Microsoft Windows operating system.The combination of spam and worm programs results in users receiving a constant drizzle of junk e-mail, which reduces the usefulness of e-mail as a practical tool.A number of anti-spam techniques mitigate the impact of spam. In the United States, U.S. Congress has also passed a law, the Can Spam Act of 2003, attempting to regulate such e-mail. Australia also has very strict spam laws restricting the sending of spam from an Australian ISP, but its impact has been minimal since most spam comes from regimes that seem reluctant to regulate the sending of spam. E-mail spoofingE-mail spoofing occurs when the header information of an email is altered to make the message appear to come from a known or trusted source. It is often used as a ruse to collect personal information. E-mail bombingE-mail bombing is the intentional sending of large volumes of messages to a target address. The overloading of the target email address can render it unusable and can even cause the mail server to crash. Privacy concernsE-mail privacy, without some security precautions, can be compromised because: e-mail messages are generally not encrypted. e-mail messages have to go through intermediate computers before reaching their destination, meaning it is relatively easy for others to intercept and read messages. many Internet Service Providers (ISP) store copies of e-mail messages on their mail servers before they are delivered. The backups of these can remain for up to several months on their server, despite deletion from the mailbox. the "Received:"-fields and other information in the e-mail can often identify the sender, preventing anonymous communication.

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