General architecture of an e-mail system:

• one of the most popular Internet services is electronic mail (e-mail).

• At the beginning of the Internet era, the messages sent by electronic mail were
short and consisted of text only; they let people exchange quick memos.
• Today, electronic mail is much more complex. It allows a message to include text,
audio, and video.
• It also allows one message to be sent to one or more recipients.
• In this chapter, we first study the
• general architecture of an e-mail system including the three main components:
• user agent,
• message transfer agent, and
• message access agent.
 architecture of e-mail
• First Scenario
• In the first scenario, the sender and the receiver of the e-mail
are users (or application programs) on the same mail server;
• sender and the receiver are directly connected to a shared
mail server.
• The administrator has created one mailbox for each user where
the received messages are stored.
• A mailbox is part of a local hard drive, a special file with
permission restrictions.
• Only the owner of the mailbox has access to it.
• When Alice needs to send a message to Bob, she runs a user
agent (UA) program to prepare the message and store it in
Bob’s mailbox. The message has the sender and recipient
mailbox addresses (names of files).
• Bob can retrieve and read the contents of his mailbox at his
convenience using a user agent.
• There is a mail room where each employee has a mailbox with
his or her name on it.
• When Alice needs to send a memo to Bob, she writes the
memo and inserts it into Bob’s mailbox. When Bob checks his
mailbox, he finds Alice’s memo and reads it.
• When the sender and the receiver of an e-mail are on the
same mail server, we need only two user agents.
 Second Scenario
• In the second scenario, the sender and the receiver of the e-
mail are users on two different mail servers.
• The message needs to be sent over the Internet.
• Here we need user agents (UAs) and message transfer agents
(MTAs)
• Alice needs to use a user agent program to send her
message to the mail server at her own site. The mail server
at her site uses a queue (spool) to store messages waiting to
be sent.
• Bob also needs a user agent program to retrieve messages
stored in the mailbox of the system at his site.
• The message, however, needs to be sent through the
Internet from Alice’s site to Bob’s site.
• Here two message transfer agents are needed: one client
and one server. Like most client-server programs on the
Internet, the server needs to run all of the time because it
does not know when a client will ask for a connection.
• The client, on the other hand, can be triggered by the system
when there is a message in the queue to be sent.
• When the sender and the receiver of an e-mail are
on different mail servers, we need two UAs and a
pair of MTAs (client and server).
 Third Scenario
• Bob, as in the second scenario, is directly connected to his mail server.
• Alice is either connected to the mail server via a point-to-point WAN—
such as a dial-up modem, a DSL, or a cable modem—or she is connected
to a LAN in an organization that uses one mail server for handling e-mails
• Alice still needs a user agent to prepare her message. She then needs to
send the message through the LAN or WAN.
• This can be done through a pair of message transfer agents (client and
server).
• Whenever Alice has a message to send, she calls the user agent which, in
turn, calls the MTA client. The MTA client establishes a connection with
the MTA server on the system, which is running all the time.
• The system at Alice’s site queues all messages received. It then uses an
MTA client to send the messages to the system at Bob’s site; the system
receives the message and stores it in Bob’s mailbox.
• At his convenience, Bob uses his user agent to retrieve the message and
reads it.
• Note that we need two pairs of MTA client-server programs.
• When the sender is connected to the mail server
via a LAN or a WAN, we need two UAs and two
pairs of MTAs (client and server).
 Fourth Scenario
Bob is also connected to his mail server by a WAN or a LAN. After the
message has arrived at Bob’s mail server, Bob needs to retrieve it. Here, we
need another set of client-server agents, which we call message access
agents (MAAs). Bob uses an MAA client to retrieve his messages. The client
sends a request to the MAA server, which is running all the time, and
requests the transfer of the messages.
• There are two important points we need to emphasize here.
• First, Bob cannot bypass the mail server and use the MTA server directly.
To use the MTA server directly, Bob would need to run the MTA server all
the time because he does not know when a message will arrive. This
implies that Bob must keep his computer on all the time if he is
connected to his system through a LAN. If he is connected through a
WAN, he must keep the connection up all the time. Neither of these
situations is feasible today.
• Second Bob needs another pair of client-server programs:
• Message access programs. This is because an MTA client-server program
is a push program: the client pushes the message to the server. Bob
needs a pull program. The client needs to pull the message from the
server.

• When both sender and receiver are connected to the mail server via a LAN
or a WAN, we need two UAs, two pairs of MTAs (client and server), and a
pair of MAAs (client and server). This is the most common situation today.
 USER AGENT
• The first component of an electronic mail system is the user agent (UA).
• It provides service to the user to make the process of sending and receiving a message easier.
• Services Provided by a User Agent
• A user agent is a software package (program) that composes, reads, replies to, and forwards
messages. It also handles local mailboxes on the user computers.
• User Agent Types
• There are two types of user agents:
• command-driven and
• GUI-based.
• Command-driven user agents belong to the early days of electronic mail. They are still present as the
underlying user agents in servers.
• A command-driven user agent normally accepts a one character command from the keyboard to
perform its task.
• For example, a user can type the character r, at the command prompt, to reply to the sender of
the message, or type the character R to reply to the sender and all recipients.
• Modern user agents are GUI-based. They contain graphical user interface (GUI) components that
allow the user to interact with the software by using both the keyboard and the mouse. They have
graphical components such as icons, menu bars, and windows that make the services easy to access.
• Some examples of GUI-based user agents are Eudora, Outlook, and Netscape.
Sending Mail
• Message Format
• to distinguish the user interface • RFC 822 defines messages to have two parts: a header and
(i.e., your mail reader) from the a body. Both parts are represented in ASCII text.
underlying message transfer • Originally, the body was assumed to be simple text. This is
protocols (such SMTP or IMAP), still the case, although RFC 822 has been augmented by
and MIME to allow the message body to carry all sorts of data.
• (2) to distinguish between this • This data is still represented as ASCII text, but because it
may be an encoded version of, say, a JPEG image, it’s not
transfer protocol and a necessarily readable by human users
companion protocol (RFC 822
and MIME) that defines the
format of the messages being
exchanged.
• We start by looking at the
message format.
• The message header is a series of <CRLF>-terminated lines.
• (<CRLF> stands for carriage return + line feed, which are a
pair of ASCII control characters often used to indicate the
end of a line of text.) .
• The header is separated from the message body by a blank
line.
• Each header line contains a type and value separated by a
colon.
• Many of these header lines are familiar to users, since they
are asked to fill them out when they compose an email
message;
• for example, the To: header identifies the message
recipient, and the Subject: header says something about the
purpose of the message.
• Other headers are filled in by the underlying mail delivery
system.
• Examples include Date: (when the message was
transmitted), From: (what user sent the message), and
Received: (each mail server that handled this message).
• There are, of course, many other header lines; the
interested reader is referred to RFC 822.
 Sending Mail
• To send mail, the user, through the UA,
creates mail that looks very similar to
postal mail.
• It has an envelope and a message
• Envelope
• The envelope usually contains the sender
address, the receiver address
• Message
• The message contains the header and the
body.
• The header of the message defines the
sender, the receiver, the subject of the
message, and some other information.
• The body of the message contains the
actual information to be read by the
recipient.
• Envelope
• The envelope usually contains the sender
address, the receiver address, and other
information.
• Message
• The message contains the header and the
body. The header of the message defines
the
• sender, the receiver, the subject of the
message, and some other information. The
body
• of the message contains the actual
information to be read by the recipient.
 Receiving Mail
• The user agent is triggered by the user (or a timer). If a user
has mail, the UA informs the user with a notice. If the user is
ready to read the mail, a list is displayed in which each line
contains a summary of the information about a particular
message in the mailbox.
• The summary usually includes the sender mail address, the
subject, and the time the mail was sent or received. The
user can select any of the messages and display its contents
on the screen.
• Addresses
• To deliver mail, a mail handling system must use an
addressing system with unique addresses.
• In the Internet, the address consists of two parts: a local
part and a domain name, separated by an @ sign.
• Local Part
• The local part defines the name of a
special file, called the user mailbox,
where all of the mail received for a user
is stored for retrieval by the message
access agent.
• Domain Name
• The second part of the address is the
domain name. An organization usually
selects one or more hosts to receive
and send e-mail; they are sometimes
called mail servers or exchangers.
• The domain name assigned to each
mail exchanger either comes from the
DNS database or is a logical name (for
example, the name of the
organization).
Mailing List or Group List

• Electronic mail allows one name, an alias, to represent several

different e-mail addresses; this is called a mailing list.
• Every time a message is to be sent, the system checks the recipient’s
name against the alias database; if there is a mailing list for the
defined alias, separate messages, one for each entry in the list, must
be prepared and handed to the MTA.
• If there is no mailing list for the alias, the name itself is the receiving
address and a single message is delivered to the mail transfer entity.
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
(MIME)
 Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
• Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is a
supplementary protocol that allows non-ASCII data to be
• Limitations:
sent through e-mail.
• It cannot be used for languages other
• MIME transforms non-ASCII data at the sender site to NVT
ASCII data and delivers it to the client MTA to be sent
than English (such as French,
through the Internet. The message at the receiving site is German,Hebrew, Russian, Chinese,
transformed back to the original data.
and Japanese).
• MIME as a set of software functions that transforms non-
ASCII data to ASCII data and vice versa, • Also, it cannot be used to send binary
files or video or audio data.
• It can send messages only in NVT 7-bit
ASCII format.
• Advantages:
• Electronic mail has a simple structure.
Its simplicity, however, comes with a
price.
 MIME Headers • MIME-Version: This header defines the
• MIME defines five headers that can be added to the version of MIME used. The current
original e-mail header section defined by RFC 822 to version is 1.1.
define the transformation parameters:
• 1. MIME-Version : (the version of MIME being used),
• 2. Content-Type (the type of data contained in the
message),
• 3. Content-Transfer-Encoding: (how the data in the
message body encoded).
• 4. Content-Id: uniquely identifies the whole message in a
multiple message environment
• 5. Content-Description: defines whether the body is
image, audio, or video.
 Content-Type
• Content-Type: This header defines
the type of data used in the body of
the message.
• The content type and the content
subtype are separated by a slash.
• Depending on the subtype, the
header may contain other
parameters.
• MIME allows seven different types
of data,
Text.-The original message is in 7-bit ASCII format and no transformation by MIME is needed.
There are two subtypes currently used, plain and HTML
multipart- how a message carrying more than one data type is structured. This is like a
programming language that defines both base types (e.g., integers and floats) and compound
types (e.g., structures and arrays).
• Four subtypes are defined for this type: mixed, parallel, digest, and alternative.
• mixed subtype- the parts must be presented to the recipient in the exact order as in the
message. Each part has a different type and is defined at the boundary.
• parallel subtype- is similar to the mixed subtype, except that the order of the parts is
unimportant.
• digest subtype- is also similar to the mixed subtype except that the default type/subtype is
message/RFC822 as defined below.
• alternative subtype-the same message is repeated using different formats
Message. In the message type, the body is itself an entire mail message, a part of a mail message,
or a pointer to a message.
• Three subtypes are currently used: RFC822, partial, and external-body.
• The subtype RFC822 is used if the body is encapsulating another message (including header
and the body).
• The partial subtype is used if the original message has been fragmented into different mail
messages and this mail message is one of the fragments.
• The fragments must be reassembled at the destination by MIME.
• Three parameters must be added: id, number, and the total.
• The id identifies the message and is present in all the fragments.
• The number defines the sequence order of the fragment.
• The total defines the number of fragments that comprise the original message.
• The subtype external-body indicates that the body does not contain the actual message but is
only a reference (pointer) to the original message.
• The parameters following the subtype define how to access the original message.
• --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• Image-The original message is a stationary image, indicating that
there is no animation.
• The two currently used subtypes are
• Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG)- which uses image
compression,and
• Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).
• -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• Video- The original message is a time-varying image (animation).
• The only subtype is Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG).
• If the animated image contains sounds, it must be sent separately
using the audio content type.
• -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• Audio- The original message is sound.
• The only subtype is basic, which uses 8-kHz standard audio data.
• -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• Application-The original message is a type of data not previously
defined.
• There are only two subtypes used currently:
• PostScript- used when the data are in Adobe PostScript format
• octet-stream-used when the data must be interpreted as a
sequence of 8-bit bytes (binary file).
• ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Content-Transfer-Encoding
• To encode the various data types so they can be shipped in an ASCII email
message. the method used to encode the messages into 0s and 1s for transport.
• Content-Transfer-Encoding: <type>
• The problem is that, for some data types (a JPEG image, for example), any given
8-bit byte in the image might contain one of 256 different values. Only a subset
of these values are valid ASCII characters.
• It is important that email messages contain only ASCII, because they might pass
through a number of intermediate systems (gateways, as described below) that
assume all email is ASCII and would corrupt the message if it contained non-ASCII
characters.
• As one aside, so as to make reading mail as painless as possible for those who still
insist on using text-only mail readers, a MIME message that consists of regular
text only can be encoded using 7-bit ASCII. There’s also a readable encoding for
mostly ASCII data.
 . Content-Transfer-Encoding
• To address this issue, MIME uses a straightforward
encoding of binary data into the ASCII character set. The
encoding is called base64.
• The idea is to map every three bytes of the original
binary data into four ASCII characters.
• This is done by grouping the binary data into 24-bit units
and breaking each such unit into four 6-bit pieces. Each
6-bit piece maps onto one of 64 valid ASCII characters;
for example, 0 maps onto A, 1 maps onto B, and so on.
• If you look at a message that has been encoded using
the base64 encoding scheme, you’ll notice only the
• 52 upper- and lowercase letters,
• the 10 digits 0 through 9, and
• the special characters+and /.
• These are the first 64 values in the ASCII character
set.
 Quoted-printable
• Base64 is a redundant encoding scheme.
that is,
• 24 bits become four characters, and
eventually are sent as 32 bits. We have an
overhead of 25 percent.
• If the data consist mostly of ASCII
characters with a small non-ASCII
portion, we can use quoted-printable
encoding.
• If a character is ASCII, it is sent as is.
• If a character is not ASCII,
• it is sent as three characters.
• The first character is the equal sign (=).
• The next two characters are the
hexadecimal representations of the byte.
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
For many years, the majority of email was moved from host to
host using only SMTP. While SMTP continues to play a central
role, it is now just one email protocol of several.
• Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) and Post Office
Protocol (POP) being two other important protocols for
retrieving mail messages.
• The actual mail transfer is done through message transfer
agents (MTAs).
• To send mail, a system must have the client MTA, and to
receive mail, a system must have a server MTA.
• The formal protocol that defines the MTA client and server
in the Internet is called Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
(SMTP).
• SMTP is used two times,
• between the sender and the sender’s mail server and
between the two mail servers, another protocol is needed
between the mail server and the receiver.
• SMTP simply defines how commands and responses must
be sent back and forth.
• Each network is free to choose a software package for
implementation
 A system used to communicate with the networks outside your domain
The mail gateway handles connections between networks.
gateways job is to store and forward email messages

A mail host is the primary component on your network to

which other systems forward mail
that cannot be delivered

A mailbox is a file that stores email for a particular

user. Mail is delivered to the user's mailbox where the
mailbox is located either on a local machine or on a
remote server.
configured to
hold one or
more
mailboxes Systems that access mail from a mail server
 the key players of SMTP
• First, users interact with a mail reader when they compose, file,
search and read their email.
• Countless mail readers are available
• In the early days of the Internet, users typically logged into the MAIL
USER
machine on which their mailbox resided, and the mail reader INTERACT READER
they invoked was a local application program that extracted
messages from the file system.
USER
• Today, of course, users remotely access their mailbox from COMPOSE,FILE,SRE invoked local
their laptop or smartphone; they do not first log into the host ACH AND READ application
that stores their mail (a mail server). THEIR EMAIL program that
extracted
• A second mail transfer protocol, such as POP or IMAP, is used to messages from
remotely download email from a mail server to the user’s the file system
device.

• Today In the early days of the Internet

invoked local
remotely access their application
mailbox from their program that
laptop or extracted
USER MAILBOX MACHINE messages
smartphone; they do USER
not first log into the LOGGED MAILBOX AND from the file
host that stores their ON MAIL READER system
mail (a mail server).
• Second, there is a mail daemon (or
process) running on each host that holds
a mailbox. this process, also called a
message transfer agent (MTA),
• as playing the role of a post office: Users
(or their mail readers) give the daemon
messages they want to send to other
users, the daemon uses SMTP running
over TCP to transmit the message to .a
daemon running on another machine,
and the daemon puts incoming messages
into the user’s mailbox (where that user’s
mail reader can later find them).
• Since SMTP is a protocol that anyone
could implement, in theory there could
be many different implementations of the
mail daemon. It turns out, though, that
there are only a few popular
• While it is certainly possible that the MTA on a sender’s machine establishes an SMTP/TCP connection to the MTA on the
recipient’s mail server, in many cases the mail traverses one or more mail gateways on its route from the sender’s host to the
receiver’s host. Like the end hosts, these gateways also run a message transfer agent process.

• The only difference is that a mail gateway typically buffers messages on disk and is willing to try retransmitting them to the
next machine for several days, while an IP router buffers datagrams in memory and is only willing to retry transmitting them
for a fraction of a second.
 IMPORTANCE OF MAIL GATEWAYS
• 1.recipient does not want to include the • The only difference is that a mail
specific host on which he or she reads gateway typically buffers messages on
email in his or her address. disk and is willing to try retransmitting
• 2.Another is scale: In large organizations, them to the next machine for several
it’s often the case that a number of days, while an IP router buffers
different machines hold the mailboxes for datagrams in memory and is only willing
the organization. to retry transmitting them for a fraction
of a second.
• The forwarding gateway maintains a
database that maps users into the
machine on which their mailbox resides;
the sender need not be aware of this
specific name.
• 3. user’s mailbox may not always be up or
reachable, in which case the mail
gateway holds the message until it can be
delivered.
• Each SMTP session involves a dialog between the two mail daemons, with one
acting as the client and the other acting as the server.
• Multiple messages might be transferred between the two hosts during a single
session.
• SMTP is also ASCII based. This means it is possible for a human at a keyboard to
pretend to be an SMTP client program.
• SMTP is best understood by a simple example.
 Commands and Responses
SMTP uses commands and responses to transfer
messages between an MTA client and an MTA server.
Commands
• Commands are sent from the client to the server. The
format of a command is shown below:
• Keyword: argument(s)
• Each command or reply is terminated by a two-
character (carriage return and line feed) end-of-line
token.
• It consists of a keyword followed by zero or more
arguments.
• SMTP defines 14 commands
• In each exchange, the client posts a command
(e.g.,HELO, MAIL, RCPT, DATA, QUIT) and
• the server responds with a code (e.g., 250, 550,
354, 221).
• The server also returns a human-readable
explanation for the code (e.g., No such user here).
• Responses
• Responses are sent from the server to the client.
• A response is a three-digit code that may be
followed by additional textual information.
 Mail Transfer Phases
• The process of transferring a mail message occurs in three
phases:
• connection establishment,
• mail transfer, and
• connection termination.
• Connection Establishment
• After a client has made a TCP connection to the well-known
port 25, the SMTP server starts the connection phase
• This phase involves the following three steps,
• 1.The server sends code 220 (service ready) to tell the client
that it is ready to receive mail.
• If the server is not ready, it sends code 421 (service not
available).
• 2. The client sends the HELO message to identify itself using
its domain name address. This step is necessary to inform
the server of the domain name of the client. 3. The server
responds with code 250 (request command completed) or
some other code depending on the situation.
 mail transfer
• After connection has been established between the SMTP client and
server, a single message between a sender and one or more
recipients can be exchanged. This phase involves eight steps. Steps 3
and 4 are repeated if there is more than one recipient
• 1. The client sends the MAIL FROM message to introduce the sender
of the message. It includes the mail address of the sender (mailbox
and the domain name). This step is needed to give the server the
return mail address for returning errors and reporting messages.
• 2. The server responds with code 250 or some other appropriate
code.
• 3. The client sends the RCPT TO (recipient) message, which includes
the mail address of the recipient.
• 4. The server responds with code 250 or some other appropriate
code.
• 5. The client sends the DATA message to initialize the message
transfer.
• 6. The server responds with code 354 (start mail input) or some other
appropriate message.
• 7. The client sends the contents of the message in consecutive lines.
Each line is terminated by a two-character end-of-line token (carriage
return and line feed).
• The message is terminated by a line containing just one period.
• 8. The server responds with code 250 (OK) or some other appropriate
code.
Connection Termination
• After the message is transferred
successfully, the client
terminates the connection. This
• phase involves two steps
• 1. The client sends the QUIT
command.
• 2. The server responds with code
221 or some other appropriate
code.
• After the connection termination
phase, the TCP connection must
be closed.
MESSAGE ACCESS AGENT: POP AND IMAP
(or)
access protocol
(or)
Mail Reader
• Mail Reader • The first and the second stages of mail
• The final step is for the user to actually retrieve his or her delivery use SMTP.
messages from the mailbox, read them, reply to them,
and possibly save a copy for future reference. • However, SMTP is not involved in the
• The user performs all these actions by interacting with a
third stage because SMTP is a push
mail reader. protocol; it pushes the message from the
client to the server. In other words, the
retrieve his or her direction of the bulk data (messages) is
messages from the from the client to the server.
USER
mailbox, read them,
MAIL READER
• the third stage needs a pull protocol; the
reply to them, and client must pull messages from the
possibly save a copy server. The direction of the bulk data are
for future reference from the server to the client.
• The third stage uses a message access
agent.
• Currently two message access protocols
are available:
• Post Office Protocol, version 3(POP3) and
• Internet Mail Access Protocol, version 4
(IMAP4).
IMAP
• IMAP is similar to SMTP in many ways.
• It is a client/server protocol running over TCP, where the client issues
commands in the form of <CRLF>-terminated ASCII text lines and the
mail server responds in kind.
• The exchange begins with the client authenticating him- or herself
and identifying the mailbox he or she wants to access.
 IMAP state transition diagram.
• In this diagram,
• LOGIN, AUTHENTICATE, SELECT, EXAMINE, CLOSE, and LOGOUT are example commands that the
client can issue.
• Other common commands include FETCH, STORE, DELETE, and EXPUNGE.
• OK is one possible server response.
Additional server responses include:
NO (client does not have permission to perform that operation) and
BAD (command is ill formed).
• When the user asks to FETCH a message, the server returns it in MIME format and the mail
reader decodes it.
• IMAP also defines a set of message attributes.
• attributes exchanged as part of other commands, independent of transferring the message
itself.
• Message attributes include information like
• the size of the message and,
• various flags associated with the message (e.g., Seen, Answered, Deleted, and Recent).
• These flags are used to keep the client and server synchronized; that is,
• when the user deletes a message in the mail reader, the client needs to report this fact to the
mail server. Later, the user decide to expunge(completely remove) all deleted messages, the
client issues an EXPUNGE command to the server, which knows to actually remove all earlier
deleted messages from the mailbox.
• Finally, when the user replies to a message, or sends a new message, the mail reader does not
forward the message from the client to the mail server using IMAP, but it instead uses SMTP.
This means that the user’s mail server is effectively the first mail gateway traversed along the
path from the desktop to the recipient’s mailbox.
Functions of IMAP4
A user can check the e-mail header prior to downloading.
• A user can search the contents of the e-mail for a specific string of
characters prior to downloading.
• A user can partially download e-mail. This is especially useful if
bandwidth is limited and the e-mail contains multimedia with high
bandwidth requirements.
• A user can create, delete, or rename mailboxes on the mail server.
• A user can create a hierarchy of mailboxes in a folder for e-mail
storage.
 Post Office Protocol, version 3 (POP3)
• POP3 is simple and limited in
functionality.
• The client POP3 software is installed on
the recipient computer;
• the server POP3 software is installed on
the mail server.
• Mail access starts with the client when
the user needs to download its e-mail
from the mailbox on the mail server.
• The client opens a connection to the
server on TCP port 110.
• It then sends its user name and password
to access the mailbox.
• The user can then list and retrieve the
mail messages, one by one. Figure shows
an example of downloading using POP3.
 POP3 has two modes:
• delete mode
• the mail is deleted from the mailbox
after each retrieval.
• normally used when the user is
working at her permanent computer
and can save and organize the
received mail after reading or replying.
• Keep mode
• the mail remains in the mailbox after
retrieval.
• normally used when the user
accesses her mail away from her
primary computer (e.g., a laptop).
• The mail is read but kept in the
system for later retrieval and
organizing.
Disadvantages of POP3:

• It does not allow the user to organize the mail on the server;
• the user cannot have different folders on the server. (Of course, the
user can create folders on their own computer.)
• In addition, POP3 does not allow the user to partially check the
contents of the mail before downloading.