| Chapter 6. Electronic Mail | ||
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| Chapter 6. Electronic Mail | ||
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Table of Contents
Email is one of the most popular applications on the Internet today. In fact, in many situations, it has become critical to the functioning of a business and is tightly integrated into almost every business process - probably with the exception of making a cup of Java.
Despite this, many system administrators don't understand how email works and it is often a hit-and-miss affair when attempting to solve email related problems.
In this chapter, I hope to de-mystify email, and help you come to a better understanding of the acronyms and terminology - and of course assist in setting up you email client on your workstation.
The first and most important aspect of email is to understand that it is, once again, a client-server model. Servers act in much the same way as the post office distribution centers, while the client acts like the postman on his bicycle (and the letter box on your gate).
In most organizations there will be one or more distribution service centers, while each person will have a client on their desktop that they will use to read and respond to email's that have been distributed to the client by their server.
In electronic mail terms, this is known as the mail transport agent (the server) and the mail user agent (the client) - or MTA and MUA for short. To distinguish these is important because many people become confused, exchanging these terms in their excitement of talking about email.
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| Understanding the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) |  |
MTA and MUA |