About Email
Whether you use a web-based email provider like Gmail, or a program within your computer like outlook both providers offer the basics of emails and more; there are advantages and disadvantages of both types.
When using a web-based email provider like Gmail, you can access your email account from any computer that has an internet connection. You also don’t have to update to the latest software as your email provider will do that for you. However a certain set back for a web-based email is that your emails are not stored on your computer, meaning that you will always require an internet connection to view your emails.
When using an email program within your computer means that your emails are stored safely on your computer, this means that you don’t have to rely on your internet provider to be always working. However a set back of using a program within your computer is that you will need to do all the manual work like updating the software, and you can only access your account from your computer or another but it has to have the same program that you use.
Email – How it works
Email appears to work simple. You send to a person, they receive the email. However it actually works in a more complex way, the way an email is sent is based around how a letter is posted and received.
- The person sending the email creates an email in their mail user agent. (MUA)
- The senders MUA transfers the email to a mail delivery agent. (MDA)
- The MDA receives and accepts the email and sends it to either local mailboxes or forwards it if it isn’t a local address.
- An email could encounter a network cloud. A network cloud could be under protection from firewalls, spam filters or malware protection software. These could delete an email. When an email is deleted in this way the person who sent the email will not be told if the email has being deleted.
- The email then encounters an email que, this could be due to loads of other emails being sent or a rather large email being sent that takes longer to process.
- While going through the network cloud the email will normally encounter at least one firewall. These firewalls will contain spam filters and virus filters.
- Once the email gets passed the network cloud it is delivered to the recipient where the email sits in the receivers MUA ready to be read.
How it works on an email program:
When you use an email program to send or receive email, the program that you use for this communicates with your email server. When receiving an email your program uses POP3 ( post office protocol), this checks for incoming messages, if there is one it downloads them to your computer and deletes them from the server, from this the email waits in the your inbox ready to read. When sending email it uses SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) this sends the outgoing message to your server, this is then delivered to the recipients server, where the same process for POP3 happens on their server so they can receive the email.
How it works using a web-based email:
Instead of using your computer to create and store emails, you are using instead websites servers to create and store emails. Once you send an email on a web-based email provider the web browser that you are using (Firefox, Google chrome, internet explorer) sends the message to the email servers which the forwards the email to the recipients email server. When you have an email coming in it is stored on the email server. From this you can view that email in your web browser of choice. However to continue seeing the message you have to keep going back onto your email on the web, as it is not downloaded and stored on your computer, it stays on your email providers server. However now, there sometimes are options to download or print your emails making web-based email more user friendly.
