E-Mail (Electronic Mail)

		What Is An E-mail Address ?
		How Do Mail Boxes Work ?
		What Is E-mail Client Software ?
		What Is POP-3 E-mail ?
		What is SMTP ?
		What Is An E-mail Alias ?
		What Is Web Accessible E-mail & IMAP ?
		What Are Web Based E-mail Accounts And Their Many Disadvantages ?

An e-mail address identifies a location to which e-mail can be delivered. A modern Internet e-mail address (using SMTP or Usenet) is a string of the form jsmith@example.com. It should be read as "jsmith at example dot com".

The part before the @ sign is the local-part of the address, often the username of the recipient, and the part after the @ sign is a domain name which can be looked up in the Domain Name System to find the Mail transfer agent or Mail eXchangers (MXs) accepting e-mail for that address.

The format of Internet e-mail addresses is defined in a document called RFC 2822, which permits only a subset of ASCII characters in e-mail addresses.

The local-part of an e-mail address allows up to 64 characters maximum and the domain name a maximum of 255 characters. The local-part "MUST BE treated as case sensitive. [...] However, exploiting the case sensitivity of mailbox local-parts impedes interoperability and is discouraged."

According to RFC 2822, the local-part of the e-mail may use any of these ASCII characters:

• Uppercase and lowercase letters
• The digits 0 through 9
• The characters, ! # $ % & ' * + - / = ? ^ _ ` { | } ~
• The character "." provided that it is not the first or last character in the local-part.

Additionally, RFC 2821 and RFC 2822 allow the local-part to be a quoted-string, as in "John Doe"@example.com, thus allowing characters in the local-part that would otherwise be prohibited. However, RFC 2821 warns: "a host that expects to receive mail SHOULD avoid defining mailboxes where the Local-part requires (or uses) the Quoted-string form".

The domain name is much more restricted. The dot separated domain labels are limited to "letters, digits, and hyphens drawn from the ASCII character set ... Mailbox domains are not case sensitive."

The bottom line is to be safe and compatible, always use lower case and no punctuation characters when creating an e-mail address.

An e-Mail box works very similar to a P.O. Box at your local post office.  The e-Mail computer has storage space set aside for each e-Mail address.  When someone sends a message it arrives at the final destination mail server and is placed in that addresses storage space. 

When you click on "Send & Receive" your e-Mail software goes to the e-Mail server, identifies itself with a login name and password so the mail server knows you are who you say you are.  It then transfers the contents of your mailbox to your computer.  Just like you driving to the post office, using your key to open the P.O. Box, collect the mail and then driving home with it.  Once you are home you open, read, and reply to your mail.  Another "Send & Receive" session is like driving back to the post office and dropping your mail in the outgoing mail slot.

So, a mailbox is nothing more than storage space set aside to hold your mail until you are ready to retrieve it.  Most Web Hosting accounts have a web server and mail server combined.  So your mailbox storage space is the same space that is also holding your web pages. 

An e-Mail Client, also known as a Mail User Agent, is the software that you use on your computer to Create, Read, Edit, Save, Send, and Receive e-Mail with.  The most commonly used e-Mail Client Software is OutLook Express which is part of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser program.

There are many other e-Mail Client Programs available.  Many are free and some cost money.  Some do miuch more than just manage your e-Mail like OutLook the full package which includes Scheduling Appointments, To-Do List Management, and more.

Everyone who signs up for Internet access from their local ISP (Internet service provider) is issued an e-mail address like "349JD@earthlink.net" for example. These ISP issued e-mail addresses are hard for people to remember and even worse, if you change ISP providers because you decide to move or find one with a lower price, you can't take your old address with you which creates a lot of headaches.

When you have your own domain name and hosting account, your e-Mail address will never need to change.  You can change Internet Service Providers and even Internet Web Hosting Providers and simply take your e-Mail address with you.

POP stands for Post Office Protocol and the 3 is for version 3.  This is the rules used by your e-Mail client and the e-Mail server to deal with your electronic mail.  There are other forms of e-Mail and e-Mail client software.  These other forms are typically very proprietary and reside on internal business systems.  However, most of these systems have a means of dealing with external mail servers that are using the POP3 standards.  These systems allow for additional functionality for users who are all under one roof or all on the same business computer network. 

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transport Protocol.  If we have POP3 why do we need SMTP?  Well, POP3 is for communication between your e-Mail software and the mail server.  SMTP is more for communication from mail server to mail server.  When you send a message there is a different set of rules and commands than when you receive a message.

A common way of thinking about this is POP3 is for receiving mail and SMTP is for sending mail.  That's an over simplified way of looking at it, but it is essentially correct.

SMTP doesn't really have much security.  Over the years we have added security by forcing a POP3 negotiation which at least will verify that you are who you say you are with a login name and password.  But because of the lack of security in SMTP spam and virus programs have been able to run amuk.

An e-Mail Alias is nothing more than a pointer or re-direction.  For example, you have an e-Mail address of joeb123@yourdomain.com and you are in charge of taking orders for your company.  Well, rather than creating a mailbox for sales@yourdomain.com and orders@yourdomain.com you can simply point them to your joeb123 mailbox.  This also makes it so you don't have to create and manage logins for those other e-Mail addresses.  And the mail server does not have to set aside hard drive storage space for these extra mailboxes. 

At hostingwithservice.com you can have an unlimited number of e-Mail forwarders.

If you travel or are away from your main computer, you will still need a way to access your e-Mail. Web accessible e-mail (commonly called "Webmail") allows you to access your e-Mail messages using any computer connected to the Internet using any browser and does not require you to download or configure bulky desktop e-mail client software.

Modern hosting providers supply both POP3 and IMAP (Internet Messaging Access Protocol) for you to access the servers mail system. IMAP and POP3 both allow you to access your e-Mail and download a copy of the messages (leaving the originals on the server) but IMAP is a more powerful system that allows you to connect to the server in real time and view or delete individual e-Mails, read each e-Mails header information as well as create and manage virtual "folders" to sort your e-Mail.

To reduce spam many ISP's like AOL or Earthlink will not allow you to connect to your own private mail server through their networks using desktop mail client like outlook express or Eudora which use port 25, however because webmail uses a different port it is immune to "Port Blocks" from your ISP. Because of its portability, and universal ability to send and receive regardless of ISP or Firewall settings, webmail has become more popular than ever and is replacing conventional email clients.

Your hostingwithservice account automatically creates a webmail setup every time you create a mailbox.

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These are Internet e-Mail accounts like Yahoo and Hotmail and are often free. With web based e-Mail, you are permitted only a single account and messages reside on a virtual server on the internet. These services rarely have the name you desire available, are often slow due to network congestion, limit your mail box storage, limit file transfer size and lack the prestige of your own e-Mail address.

Most attach messages or advertising to your outgoing messages so anyone reading your e-Mails will know your using a free service. They even force you to watch banner advertisements while reading your e-Mails. Many of the free e-mail services get you hooked only to change policy and force you to pay later.

Finally, many of these companies are halting their free service altogether and often without warning forcing you to quickly find a new e-Mail provider and then endure the tedious task of trying to contact everyone you ever e-Mailed and every newsletter or subscription in order to inform them of your new address.

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