Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard for electronic mail (e-mail) transmission across Internet Protocol (IP) networks. SMTP was first defined in RFC 821 (STD 10), and last updated by RFC 5321 (2008) which describes extended SMTP (ESMTP), the protocol in widespread use today.

While electronic mail server software uses SMTP to send and receive mail messages, user-level client mail applications typically only use SMTP for sending messages to a mail server for relaying. For receiving messages, client applications usually use either the Post Office Protocol (POP) or the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) to access their mail box accounts on a mail server.

Description

SMTP is a relatively simple, text-based protocol, in which one or more recipients of a message are specified (and in most cases verified to exist) along with the message text and possibly other encoded objects. The message is then transferred to a remote server using a series of queries and responses between the client and server. Either an end-user's e-mail client, a.k.a. MUA (Mail User Agent), or a relaying server's MTA (Mail Transport Agent) can act as an SMTP client.

An e-mail client determines the outgoing mail SMTP server from its configuration. A relaying server typically determines which SMTP server to connect to by looking up the MX (Mail eXchange) DNS record for each recipient's domain name. Conformant MTAs (not all) fall back to a simple A record in the case of no MX (relaying servers can also be configured to use a smart host). The SMTP client typically initiates a TCP connection to the server on the well-known port designated for SMTP, port number 25.

It is quite easy to test an SMTP server using the netcat program (see below).

SMTP is a "push" protocol that cannot "pull" messages from a remote server on demand. To retrieve messages only on demand, which is the most common requirement on a single-user computer, a mail client must use POP3 or IMAP. Another SMTP server can trigger a delivery in SMTP using ETRN. It is possible to receive mail by running an SMTP server. POP3 became popular when single-user computers connected to the Internet only intermittently; SMTP is more suitable for a machine permanently connected to the Internet.

History

Various forms of one-to-one electronic messaging were used in the 1960s. People communicated with one another using systems developed for a particular mainframe computer. As more computers began to be interconnected with others, especially in the US Government's ARPANET, standards were developed to allow users using different systems to be able to e-mail one another. SMTP grew out of these standards developed during the 1970s.

SMTP can trace its roots to two implementations described in 1971, the Mail Box Protocol, which may not have been implemented but is discussed in RFC 196 and other RFCs; and the SNDMSG program, which according to RFC 2235, Ray Tomlinson of BBN "invents" for TENEX computers to send mail across the ARPANET. Fewer than 50 hosts were connected to the ARPANET at this time.