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SMTP receive as well as send

Greg Jorgensen gregj at pobox.com
Wed Oct 18 03:39:39 EDT 2000 
"Andrew Markebo" <andrew.markebo at telelogic.com> wrote in message
news:ksem1flt5z.fsf at telelogic.com...
> The SMTP protocol doesn't support receiving emails. You probably need
> pop3 or some impap module to receive emails.

Not true. SMTP is for moving email between servers--both sending and
receiving. POP3 and IMAP are for managing received messages and downloading
messages from a server to a workstation.

Email messages go from your mail program to your SMTP server. That server's
Mail Transport Agent (MTA)--sendmail, qmail, etc.--determines the machine
designated to receive email for each recipient (the domain's Mail eXchanger,
from the DNS records). A connection is established between the servers using
SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol), and the message is sent. A message
may go through a few servers before it arrives at a server that knows how to
do local delivery--a server where the recipient has a mailbox. Later the
recipient retrieves the message from their mail server using POP3 or IMAP.

The confusion comes from how most people use their ISP's mail services: you
send your mail out to an SMTP server, and you retrieve your mail from a POP3
or IMAP server. The mail servers are often the same machine. The SMTP
service not only sends your outgoing emails, it receives incoming emails
addressed to you (and other users who have mailboxes on that server). The
POP3 or IMAP service is only used to retrieve messages from your mailbox.

--
Greg Jorgensen
Deschooling Society
Portland, Oregon, USA
gregj at pobox.com
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