Know Few Important Facts about SMPT
Emails are the most impactful way to communicate; the number of emails sent and received globally is increasing at a rapid speed every year. As of 2021, around 319.6 billion emails are delivered and sent every day around the world. The data is expected to reach around 376.4 billion on a daily basis by 2025. Apparently, it looks like a simple procedure, but the mechanism behind it is an intricate one. SMPT (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the basic mechanism used by email providers to power the transmission of emails around the world.
IMAP & POP 3
Email protocols are a set of standard rules for data exchange from a sender`s email address to the recipient’s email address. Along with SMPT, other protocols used in email communication are Post Office Protocol (POP3) and Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). These protocols are used for sending and receiving emails, but SMPT is only devoted to sending emails. A free SMTP server is a computer or application that facilitates sending emails. The server receives mail from the sender’s email address, transfers it to another SMPT server, and conveys it to the incoming mail server. An SMPT server manages the sending, receiving, and transmitting of emails with a dedicated address or set of addresses.
Email is transferred
SMPT mail relay is a straightforward course where the email is transferred from one server to another to be delivered to the recipient’s email address. If you are an employee of company “X” and need to send an email to an employee of company “Y” to perform this, you need to access X`s SMPT server. That dedicated server relayed and delivered the email to Y`s server. The process of transferring email from one server to another is known as relaying. But when an email is sent within the same domain, there is no involvement of a second server, and this procedure is not classified as relaying.
Sending procedure
To have a comprehensive understanding of the SMPT mechanism, one needs to look at the sending procedure. It is an end-to-end message delivery system, and the first step is to establish a connection between sender and receiver mail address. The connection is built on the pedestal of TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). When the user clicks on the send email icon, it automatically establishes an SMPT connection. Subsequently, the email is converted into command strings within the dedicated channel. The inbuilt commands give relevant information to the server, such as the sender`s and receiver`s email address and content.
The commands
Following MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) processes the incoming data, checking the email domain and identifying if the domain is identical or not. If the domain is different, the server uses the DNS to recognize the recipient’s domain, and the email is relayed to the specific domain. Generally, the transmission process between the two servers involves six commands; HELO/EHLO is the first one that initiates the communication. MAIL FROM is the second command specifying the email address of the sender, followed by RCPT declaring the email address of the recipient. The fourth command is DATA, a group of commands; an end-to-end data sequence, QUIT command is activated after the mail is sent, followed by NOOP and RESET that rearrange the connection at the initial stage.
