The Technical Principles of Email Communication
What happens when you write an email and press the send button?
Email doesn’t go directly to the recipient’s computer, but instead, it travels through the internet in multiple steps.
In this lesson, we will explore the process of sending and receiving emails and the main technical elements that make this process possible.
The Process of Sending/Receiving Emails
The process of sending and receiving emails primarily involves the use of SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 protocols.
Sending Emails with SMTP
The protocol used for sending emails is SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol).
SMTP is responsible for sending your email to its destination.
An SMTP server, which operates on this protocol, finds the next server or the recipient’s email server to forward the email to.
During this process, the email does not go directly to the recipient’s computer but is forwarded through multiple intermediate servers.
Write email -> Send to SMTP server -> Go through intermediate servers -> Arrive at recipient's server
Reading Emails with IMAP and POP3
Now the email has arrived at the recipient’s server.
How can we read this email?
This is where the IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and POP3 (Post Office Protocol version 3) protocols come into play.
Both protocols are used to read emails, but they work slightly differently.
What is IMAP?
IMAP allows you to read emails on the server.
This means that emails remain on the server, allowing you to access the same emails from multiple devices.
For example, an email read on a smartphone using IMAP can also be accessed on a computer.
What is POP3?
POP3 downloads emails from the server and deletes them from the server once the download is complete.
This way, emails are stored on one device, so you cannot access the same email from another device.
POP3 is useful for saving server space, but it has the disadvantage of not being able to access emails from multiple devices like IMAP.
IMAP: Emails remain on the server, accessible from multiple devices
POP3: Downloads and deletes emails from the server, accessible from only one device
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