E-mail question?

[JK04]

Hey,
Could someone explain to me what POP3 is and how it works?
Thanks for any help or info

-JK

[plowter]

Try How Stuff Works for a full explanation of how email works.

[Ethel]

Outlook Express is an example of a pop 3 server. You give it authority to collect all your emails from your different email addresses and it collects it all in one place, notifying you when you have new mail.

It saves you having to log in to all your different email accounts.

[fo3nix]

Ethel: I'm sorry, but that's wrong.

POP3 is the Post Office Protocol. A protocol is just a set of rules and regulations that defines how something should be done. the Post Office Protocol refers to how email should be sent from an email server to a client.

An email server is required to send and receive email. This is a computer setup to deal with email, using various protocols, one such being POP. Your email server may be your ISP, or it could be someone like Hotmail or Google (with Gmail). If someone (a user) wants to email you, they open their client application. This is a program that does the task of talking to the email server from the user's side. One such application is Outlook Express (and hence it's an email client, not a server).

When they send you an email, their client sends the email to their email server. This then looks to see who it's addressed to, and sends it on to your email server. When your email server gets it, it's stored on that computer.

Now, you come to your computer a bit later and open your email client (Outlook Express, or even gmail or hotmail in your web browser), and check your mail. If you're using the POP system, this means that you ask your server for all new mail, and it sends it to your computer (removing it from the server). You can then read or do whatever you want with it on your computer.

That's all POP is. Just a set of rules to specify how you are to receive email from a server. It means that email is moved from server to you, and not just kept on the server.

[fo3nix]

IMAP is another protocol, that works in the same place (but instead of) POP. It's slightly newer, but still showing its age a lot.

If you use IMAP, your client computer (and thus client application, such as Outlook Express) asks for new email, and reads it from the server (without moving it to your computer). This means that you can check your email on serveral devices, and have all of them stay in sync.

For example, you may check your email using your main computer at home, and move a message to another folder. You can then go and check your email later on your Blackberry (or something), and find that the email you moved is in the folder it should be -- simply because using IMAP, you're just reading what's on the server.

This is the advantage of IMAP.