How E-mail Works

E-mail works in a very similar way to web sites. In fact to send an e-mail no more hardware is required than what it takes to view a web page.

Let's take apart a simple e-mail address: name@example.com, and work backwards!

When you send an e-mail to name@example.com, the first steps involved are identical to how a web site works. Your computer goes through the same steps to find example.com as it would say, google.ie

Once the location of example.com has been routed out, there is then a simple piece of software on the server example.com called a mail server. The simplest way of looking at it, is that every person on the server has a file. So when an e-mail is sent to name@example.com. The e-mail is recorded in the file for name, on the server example.com.

So when name logs on to read his e-mails, all the records in the file name on example.com are displayed.

There is more complex e-mail servers and setups out there. But the basics of simple e-mail are really this simple!