1. E-Mail
    1. Uses for E-Mail
      1. E-Mail Concepts
    2. Specifications

E-Mail

E-Mail (derived from electronic mail, or simply email or mail in the context of computing) is an Internet application for sending mail between people. E-Mail can collectively refer to the protocols, media types, DNS records, agents, and other systems that comprise the application; or just SMTP, the protocol that delivers a message to an inbox.

Uses for E-Mail

  • Delivering a message to a recipient
  • Sending small attachments

E-Mail Concepts

  • Address — denotes which mailbox a message should be delivered to
  • SMTP — used for delivering email to a recipient
  • IMAP — Protocol for reading and synchronizing an email from an inbox
  • POP3 — Protocol for transferring email to a local inbox
  • DNS — several essential mail functions are configured using DNS records
  • Media type (MIME type) — The name of the syntax used to encode/decode the document

Specifications

  • RFC 5321 — Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
  • RFC 5322 — Internet Message Format
  • RFC 6530 — Internationalized Email
  • RFC 6531 — SMTP Extension for Internationalized Email
  • RFC 6532 — Internationalized Email Headers