e-mails!! Something which is very common to all internet users.Most of us daily sends multiple emails but have you guys ever wondered , when you write an email and press the send button what actually happen behind the scenes ? So keep reading to know the technology behind emails.

So when you send an email from your system , it goes to a server called the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server. The email is broken down into three parts viz the senders address,recipients address and the content. Each mail service has a different SMTP server . The client i.e your computer connects to the server of the senders email service and that server connects to the recipient server

Say for eg the sender’s address is senders@gmail.com and recipient’s address is recipient@yahoo.com.So the computer will connect to gmail’s SMTP server and will look for the sender and verify the details.

After the verification is done the server sends a TCP connection request to the recipient server ,here it is yahoo mail server .TCP is Transfer Control Protocol. TCP will be elaborated in a different post.For now what you need to understand is TCP is a protocol or set of rules followed when a packet of information is sent from one node to other.

So once the connection is initiated the mail is sent to the recipient server

Now,the recipient server looks for the address of the receiver .This address is known as the IP address.Once located the mail is downloaded on to the client machine by IMAP or POP3 protocol which will be discussed later.

The entire email service is very similar to a post delivery system

So let’s make an analogy

Step 1: if you want to send a letter you write it and put in the post box. This is analogous to writing an email and clicking on the send button

Step 2 : The client sends the mail to the SMTP server.This is same as the postman delivering the letter to the post office.

Step 3 : The Sender SMTP server sends it to the receiver SMTP server. Similarly the letter is sent to the post office of the desired location.

Step 4 : The mail is then delivered to the receiver from the server the same way a postman delivers the letter to the recipient

So email service follows exact same principle of a mail delivery system. But the tech behind is really sophisticated and fast.