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Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

This document provides an overview of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). It discusses how SMTP transfers messages from a sender's mail server to a receiver's mail server. It describes the main components of SMTP, including user agents that allow users to compose messages and mail transfer agents that handle transferring messages across the internet. The document also discusses some key aspects of how SMTP works, such as using store and forward mechanisms and TCP port 25 for communications. It notes some limitations of SMTP, such as only supporting 7-bit ASCII characters.

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PinakiRanjanSarkar
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144 views

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

This document provides an overview of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). It discusses how SMTP transfers messages from a sender's mail server to a receiver's mail server. It describes the main components of SMTP, including user agents that allow users to compose messages and mail transfer agents that handle transferring messages across the internet. The document also discusses some key aspects of how SMTP works, such as using store and forward mechanisms and TCP port 25 for communications. It notes some limitations of SMTP, such as only supporting 7-bit ASCII characters.

Uploaded by

PinakiRanjanSarkar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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IIST, D EPARTMENT OF AVIONICS

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

Pinaki Ranjan Sarkar


March 16, 2016

SMTP Electronic mail is the most widely used internet application and the heart of
this runs on SMTP. It's an application layer of the TCP/IP protocol based on RFC 821. SMTP
transfers sender's message from sender's mail server to receiver's mail server. SMTP client
and severs have two main components:
User Agents
Main Transfer Agent
A user or sender prepares a message through the user agent which later encloses
the message in envelope. Examples of the User agents are Thunderbird, Eudora etc. Then
the user sends the message to users mail server or mail transfer agent. Then the MTA transfers the mail across the internet. Examples of MTAs are Exim, Zmailer in UNIX like operating
system and IBM domino, Microsoft Exchange Server etc. in Microsoft Windows. The transfer
system in SMTP can be related to the postal service. It follows a mechanism called Store and
Forward. During the baby step of SMTP, it used Relay method to send the messages to the
email server. Nowadays the Domain Name System is used. SMTP generally operates using
TCP port 25 though other mail servers use port 587 as the port 25 is more tends to be affected
from malware and spam. SMTP is used for sending mails and to receive mails there are two
other protocols which are used. Post Office Protocol Version 3(POP3) and Internet Mail Access Protocol or IMAP.
SMTP uses a set of codes that allows server to process different parts of a message
into some categories which can be understood by other servers. The email server software
is designed to understand the codes provided by the SMTP server. The message reaches the
destination through different MTAs. When we send a letter we put the letter inside an envelope and mention the address on top of that. Similarly in SMTP message header contains the
address of the destination.

Though HTTP and SMTP both use persistent connections, they have some striking
differences. HTTP is mainly a pull protocol on the other hand SMTP is a push protocol. Another difference is in the text format. SMTP needs each message to be in 7-bit ASCII format.
HTTP does not have this restriction.Though it is the heart of the email communication but
it has some serious security issues. Simplicity of the protocol mainly stops the usefulness.
As discussed above SMTP has limitation of 7-bit ASCII characters so it cannot transmit text
data which uses 8-bit codes (International characters) SMTP is MIME encodes so it converts
data into text files before transmitting. SMTP tries to provide a reliable service but it does not
guarantee. There is no end to end acknowledgement.

R EFERENCES :
wikipedia
Computer Networking by Kurose and Ross
NPTEL
slideshare

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