Lecture 4: Applications #2: Email

The SMTP Protocol

The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol defined in RFC821 (and updated, most recently, in RFC2821) specifies how mail is delivered from one system to another. It is a relatively straightfoward protocol.

Initially, an email client (usually the delivery agent software on the originating machine) establishes a TCP connection to the SMTP server (at port 25) on the destination machine.

The server responds with an informative message beginning with the 3-digit code 220 The client then sends a HELO command identifying the domain name of the system it is running on.

The client software then transmits one (or more) mail messages to the server. Each message is preceded by a MAIL-FROM and one or more RCPT-TO messages. The responses to these messages always begin with 3-digit numbers followed by a human readable message. Then the text of the message itself (including its headers) is transmitted using a DATA message.

Finally, a QUIT message from the client tells the server to close the TCP connection. An example of this is given on the next slide.

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