All you need to know about E-mail.

E-mail (Electronic Mail) is quickly becoming many people's preferred method of written communication. With email available from your computer, mobile phone, T.V. and even games console, you have no excuse for saying "E-mail, What's that then?". If you use email everyday, yet still not completely understand how it works, here's a quick & simple guide.

How does email travel from the sender to the recipient?

When you have the content for your email ready, the most important part, as with snail mail is the address. The E-mail address can be broken down into two sections:

"Part1 at Part2"

Part1 is usually the persons name to whom you are sending the message.

Part2 is the domain name or URL of the provider hosting this persons email account, for example www.hotmail.com

Once you have clicked Send,

• the email is sent to your local internet host using SMTP
• The mail is directed using domain names to recipients ISP host (SMTP)
• You 'click check for new email' and the email is downloaded to your screen using POP3

What is SMTP?

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the protocol used for transfering your mail from your computer to your ISP server.

What is a POP3 account?

POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) is the most recent version of a standard protocol for receiving e-mail. POP3 is a client/server protocol in which e-mail is received and held for you by your Internet Service Provider.

When you check for new mail on the server , your mail program uses the POP3 protocal to download your mail. POP3 is built into most modern e-mail programs e.g. Microsofts outlook express, Eudora to name just a few.

Before you decide on what hosting package you go for you will need to take into account your email arrangements. If you just want one email account which will be myaddress@mydomain.com then most ISP's offer this in all their standard packages. It's when you need separate accounts for different people that it becomes a slightly more complex.

What is unlimited email forwarding?

Unlimited email forwarding is usually set up on your first POP3 account, i.e. Anything@yourdomain.com is sent to your 'general' email account. The problem is if you have 2 seperate accounts, say one in Cyprus and one in America, when the person is America checks for new mail they recieve all the mail in the POP3 account.

The same rule applies for the person in Cyprus, this can be a problem if the email is confidential to the individual. The way round this is to have multiple pop3 accounts.

What's the advantage of multiple POP3 accounts?

Multiple POP3 accounts means you have multiple email storage areas on your hosts network.This allows you to have completely separate accounts that cannot be accessed by anybody who doesn't have the appropriate username and password for the specific account.

You could therfore have theboss@yourcompany.com, sales@yourcompany.com, tech@yourcompany.com, accounts@yourcompany.com and so on. Each account is independant and secure. This way of sending emails is more professional yet costs little extra to achieve

That's about the basics of email! Larger companies who run there own email servers and have thousands of accounts, are simply using variations on the above theme.