The email client sends the outgoing email to an SMTP server to handle sending the message. The SMTP server analyses the TO address and determines the domain names of the person in question (for example, your email address indicates shaw.ca as it's domain). The sending server then does a DNS query (name lookup) for the MX (mail exchanger) record(s) for the domain. From there, it has the IP address of the destination server. The sending server then passes the message to the destination server.
The destination server takes a look at the email address to find the account name (the part before the @ sign). It then drops the message into the mailbox for that account. This is a rather simplified example, as you might have to deal with mail gateways, filtering, etc. But the general concept is probably sound for most cases. But at it's heart, email uses the Domain Name System to find target servers. HTH. Shawn -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jon Copeland Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 4:52 PM To: CLUG General Subject: [clug-talk] How do mail servers work? I'm just a bit curious here. How does an email from somebody in Scandinavia know how to get to my mail server (if I had one setup) in Canada? I don't know how the whole concept works. And how can somebody move mail servers around without causing a problem? -j- _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
