INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
HOW EMAIL WORK
9/22/2011 Binary University College

NAME ID NUM COURSE NUM

CHONG ZI FENG 930102- 14- 5421 Diploma Business Administration 013- 2349888

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Introduction
In now day the internet is the most active communication system on the world. People can get all the information from the network. The communication between family or friends are also will become more close through internet. Some of them usually are using the mailing system like email. From the user standpoint email seem easy and simple to work, because that is just the sender create and send a mail to the recipient by just select the email address and click send. But in reality, that is not only those simple work in mail. The email actually shall through a lot of process and transfer after been sent. The process included many agent of the network or the network cloud which server are responsible by a network company.

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How Email Really Work?

This is the most simple diagram shown how the human being using their company account to send an email to other different network company, that shown there are containing at least 6 steps of process from sender to the recipient.

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Step A: Sender Creates and Sends an Email

By following the diagram the step A shown the sender start to send a email to another email user. The sender will start to create a mail in their MUA(Mail User Agent) and select the address where they want the email send to and click the word send. MUA ( Mail User Agent ) MUA refers to a network company which the user is having an account and satisfying the internet service included the mailing system. They are responsible and application to help the members send, receive and read the email. For the example of those company like : Window Live Messenger, Yahoo and so on.

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Step B: Senders MDA/MTA Routes the Email

After the sender create and sent the mail through MUA, the MUA will deliver the mail to the senders MDA(Mail Delivery Agent) or the senders MTA(Mail Transfer Agent) then to the network cloud. What is MDA and MTA? Mail Delivery Agent refers to the agent of received the mail where MUA sent and makes process and transfers the mail to the MTA or network cloud. Mail Transfer Agent also responsibilities for what MDA handles. Both of two servers are almost doing the same work by different name.

Why the MUA need to deliver the mail to the MDA/MTA? The MUA is just one of the network company on the whole internet, there are containing so many other network company to provide mailing service. And the mailing service not only will send or receive the email come from the same network company, they are also will send and receive the email with other different network company, so they must through more than one MTA to send or receive both mail to the other MUA. Condition same as the Window Live Messenger user sends a email to the Yahoo user.

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Step C: Network Cloud

Inside the Network Cloud can be some of the network company or ISP (Internet Service Provider. It is having a lot of mail server, routers and other devices or services inside and application to receive the email from the MTA and load the email as well. The mail server will process the mail by loading with a long time meaning the size of file is large and it unable to receive an email when taken down for maintenance, and sometimes may not have identified themselves properly to the internet through the DNS (Domain Name System) so that other MTAs in the network cloud are unable to deliver mail as addressed. Some of the email services provider they have their own Network Cloud when their companies are process a large volume of email. DNS (Domain Name System) A system of application to identify the address of an email which it receive from the MTA in the Network Cloud. Every mail need to through DNS then just only continue to the next MTA.

Network Cloud
Routers/Serve rs Routers/Serve rs Routers/Serve rs Routers/Serve rs

DNS

Routers/Serve rs Routers/Serve rs

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Email Queue
When an email that is addressed to another difference email service companies as the diagram given, it may enter the email queue with other outgoing message. The email will through the queue what called Central Gateway with other mail when it is ready to transfer to next MTA or Network Cloud. If there is a high volume of mail in the queue either because there are many message ready to send or the mail unusually large to load, both of the email in queue will be delay in the queue until to the MTA process.

MTA

MTA

MTA

queue

queue

queue

Central Gateway Network Cloud/ MTA

MTA

MTA

MTA

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Step E: MTA to MTA transfer

When an email is transferring the senders MTA will handles all the aspect of mail delivery until the mail are either accept or reject by the recipients MTA. After the mail was finished the queue it will enter the second network cloud( Internet Network Cloud) where it is routed along a host to host chain of servers. Every MTA who are transferring an email will stop and ask again the DNS in the second network cloud in order to identify the next MTA in delivery chain.

To find out the IP address and mail box of the recipient the MTA must drill down through the DNS, which consists of a set of servers distributed across the Internet. Beginning with the root nameservers at the top-level domain (.ltd), then domain nameservers that handle requests for domain within that .ltd, and eventually to nameservers that know about the local domain. There are 13 root servers serving the top-level domains(e.g,.org, .com, .edu, .gov, .net, etc,). Those root servers refer request for a given domain to the root name servers that handle request for that tld. In practice, this step is seldom necessary.

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Step F: Firewalls, Spam and Virus Filters

An email should through a lot of the MTA or the network cloud by the same time, the email also through a lot of the firewalls, spam or virus filters which is set by both email or internet services providers. Before an email through a firewalls it has to scan by the spam and virus filters. Both filters responsible to pass the qualifies files and detect the spam or malware files. When an email is detected because of the malware reason the mail will be quarantined and the sender will be inform about the mail was blocked. But if the mail is detect as the spam files and the files will be block without notifying to the sender.

Virus Filter

Spam

Firewalls

Qualified Mail

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Delivery
After an email passed all the hazards or process, it finally delivered and reached the recipients MTA. The recipients MTA now will transfer the email to the third network cloud which cloud that is belong to the recipients email services providers and run the process same as other network cloud. After the process of network cloud the recipients MTA will calls the local MDA to deliver the email to the correctly address or mailbox, where it will sit until it is retrieved by the recipients MUA.

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Its like Regular Mail

The construction and delivery of email is similar to regular mail but email is more modern then a regular mail. An email message constructed same as the regular mail youd send through the postal services, a message enclosed in an envelope. The envelope header of an email is analogous to the hardcopy letter but the information contained of an email compare with the regular mail is more detail than a regular mail. Message Header An email message header youll see there are included the From, To, Date, and Subject fields. The information given by an email was more clearly than a regular mail as it can define the sender and the date received. The Date The emails header Date field is following by the originating MUA, so it will show the date and time when the sender sent an email. The Subject The subject is not really used in regular mail except some of the business formal letters. But on email cases, that necessary for an email because when an email without a subject you could not send a mail. The Reply-To The envelope header of an email also containing with a Reply-To by given the senders address for the receiver to reply the sender. So that was more convenience for the mail user.

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Conclusion
Although the mailing system we use in daily look simple, but its containing a lot of work behind them we are never know. After both of these research and understanding finally I known how the email work like, that is more difficult than I thought. By after the reading it is more process to do than a regular mail. I realize we are lucky to satisfy both technical implement by born in this era and we shall treasure what we are satisfying.

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References
Information http://www.oasis-open.org/khelp/kmlm/user_help/html/how_email_works.html Pictures http://www.google.com.my/imghp?hl=en&tab=ii

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