2.3 Email

Takeaways

• 😀 Email has been around since 1972 and became a cultural staple after the 1998 movie 'You've Got Mail.'
• 😀 Email operates on a client-server model similar to HTTP, with user agents (email clients), email servers, and the SMTP protocol at its core.
• 😀 The user agent (email client) is what people use to send, compose, and read emails, while the email server handles message storage and queues.
• 😀 Email servers are responsible for storing incoming messages and managing outgoing messages that are waiting to be delivered.
• 😀 SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is used to transfer emails between servers, and it operates over TCP connections for reliable message delivery.
• 😀 An email message travels through several steps: Alice sends it via her email client to her server, which contacts Bob's server, and Bob receives it in his mailbox.
• 😀 The SMTP protocol involves a handshake between sending and receiving servers to establish communication and transfer messages.
• 😀 SMTP differs from HTTP in that it's a push protocol (sending data from client to server), whereas HTTP is a pull protocol (client requests data from server).
• 😀 SMTP messages are human-readable, encoded in ASCII, and contain status codes and responses similar to HTTP, but with a few differences.
• 😀 Email messages follow a defined structure, with a header (including 'To,' 'From,' and 'Subject' lines) and a body, which is encoded in 7-bit ASCII.
• 😀 IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is the most commonly used protocol for retrieving email messages from servers, with other alternatives like HTTP also available.

Highlights

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