What Email Is, and how it compares to traditional mail.

You may know that Email (Electronic Mail) is a way to send and receive
massages across the internet.
Electronic mail, e-mail or email is information stored on a computer that
is exchanged between two users over telecommunications. More plainly,
e-mail is a message that may contain text, files, images, or other
attachments sent through a network to a specified individual or group of
individuals.

A Brief Stories
The first e-mail was sent by Ray Tomlinson in 1971. Tomlinson sent the
e-mail to himself as a test e-mail message, containing the text "something
like QWERTYUIOP." However, despite sending the e-mail to himself,
the e-mail message was still transmitted through ARPANET.
Understanding Email Addresses
To receive emails, you will need an Email Account and an Email Address
Also if you want to send emails to other people, you will need to obtain their email
addresses, its important to learn how to write email address correctly, because if you do
not enter them exactly right, your email will not be delivered or they might be delivered
to wrong person.
Email address are always written in a standard format that includes a username
The @ (at) symbol and the email provider’s domain. The Username is the name you
choose to identify yourself and the email provider is the website that host your email
account

Example of how email addresses are written :

“ Guild12345@gmail.com ”

Guild12345 = Username
@ = at (symbol)
Gmail.com = Email Provider
Here’s a basic explanation of how email works:
1. The sender composes a message using the email client on their computer.
2. When the user sends the message, the email text and attachments are uploaded to the SMTP
(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server as outgoing mail.
3. All outgoing messages wait in the outgoing mail queue while the SMTP server communicates
with the DNS (Domain Name Server–like a phone book for domain names and server IP
addresses) to find out where the recipient’s email server is located. If the SMTP server finds the
recipient’s email server, it will transfer the message and attachments. If the recipient’s server
can’t be found, the sender will get a “Mail Failure” notification in their inbox.
4. The next time the recipient clicks “Send & Receive,” their email client will download all new
messages from their own email server. You’ve got mail!

EMAIL IS COMPRESSED SMTP SERVER

IN A MAIL CLIENT

DOMAIN DNS SERVER

INTERNET

MTA SERVER USER ACCOUNT RECIPIENT EMAIL

Get Your Email Account :

If you want to sign up for your own email account, we suggest choosing from one of the
three major webmail Providers.

• Yahoo! Mail
• Microsoft Outlook
• Gmail
Advantages and disadvantages of using email

Advantages
• Emails are delivered extremely fast when compared to traditional post.
• Emails can be sent 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
• Webmail means emails can be sent and received from any computer, anywhere in the world,
that has an internet connection.
• Cheap - when using broadband, each email sent is effectively free. Dial-up users are
charged at local call rates but it only takes a few seconds (for conventional email, text only)
to send an email.
• Emails can be sent to one person or several people.
Disadvantages
• The recipient needs access to the internet to receive email.
• Viruses are easily spread via email attachments (most email providers scan emails
for viruses on your behalf).
• Phishing - sending an email to a user falsely claiming to be a legitimate company to
scam the user into providing information, such as personal information and bank
account numbers on a bogus website. The details will then be used for identity theft.
• No guarantee the mail will be read until the user logs on and checks their email.
• Spam - unsolicited email, ie junk mail.