Almost everyone who uses the internet on any kind of basis, whether frequent or infrequent, understands how emails work, in a general way. The one thing most people do not understand, however, is how the email servers actually operate. Most people have a little inkling but would likely be surprised at all the steps entailed. Here we will not be covering ALL the steps and concepts involved with email transmission through servers, but will, instead stick to their basic functions and processes.

So long as you have client whom can receive emails and a server for them to pass through at the other end you are ready to send and receive mail. A server is a internet software program or hard world device used for bother storage and transmission and reception of information. A internet server will “listen” to a certain number of designated ports, transmission spots, and react accordingly. Once a person or program attaches itself to the port the server will activate.

The simplest of all email servers would go a little something like this: Through the ports the server has created a listing of everyone’s email whom uses it. Let us say that there are only two people whom use it John@Smith.com and Billy@Bob.com. It would have a specific text file created for each different account which would allow it to identify those individuals when they are sending and receiving emails. The text file would be along the lines of JOHNSMITH.TXT and BILLYBOB.TXT. Let use say that Smith wishes to send a message to Bob and composes one (“Still up for that boxing match?”). Once the text files have been established and John has written and sent his message, the email client will send the file through to the server which will in turn send the email to the receiver (Bob), along with the name of the sender and the text of the message.

This is just the basic formatting for such a process and in the real world this scenario is never this simple. The reason for this is that there are a lot of other factors and variables which need to be taken into consideration, such as time and data, or video compression and reading if one is attached. However, generally speaking, it is a relatively simple process.