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TCP/IP Tutorial and Technical Overview - IBM Redbooks

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15.1 Simple Mail Transfer Protocol<br />

The basic Internet mail protocols provide mail (note) <strong>and</strong> message exchange<br />

between <strong>TCP</strong>/<strong>IP</strong> hosts, but generally require that data be represented as 7-bit<br />

ASCII text. Because this can be restrictive, facilities have been added for the<br />

transmission of data that cannot be represented in this manner. Originally, there<br />

were three st<strong>and</strong>ard protocols that apply to mail of this kind. The term Simple<br />

Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is frequently used to refer to the combined set of<br />

protocols because they are so closely interrelated. Strictly speaking, however,<br />

SMTP is just one of the three. Those three st<strong>and</strong>ards were:<br />

► A st<strong>and</strong>ard for the exchange of mail between two computers (STD 10/RFC<br />

821), which specified the protocol used to send mail between <strong>TCP</strong>/<strong>IP</strong> hosts.<br />

This st<strong>and</strong>ard was SMTP itself.<br />

► A st<strong>and</strong>ard (STD 11) on the format of the mail messages, contained in two<br />

RFCs. RFC 822 described the syntax of mail header fields <strong>and</strong> defined a set<br />

of header fields <strong>and</strong> their interpretation. RFC 1049 described how a set of<br />

document types other than plain text ASCII can be used in the mail body (the<br />

documents are 7-bit ASCII containing imbedded formatting information:<br />

PostScript, Scribe, SGML, TEX, TROFF, <strong>and</strong> DVI are all listed in the<br />

st<strong>and</strong>ard).<br />

The official protocol name for this st<strong>and</strong>ard was MAIL.<br />

► A st<strong>and</strong>ard for the routing of mail using the Domain Name System, described<br />

in RFC 974. The official protocol name for this st<strong>and</strong>ard was DNS-MX.<br />

However, because of the ambiguity of having three st<strong>and</strong>ards describing a<br />

common application, two new RFCs were released to consolidate, update, <strong>and</strong><br />

clarify the basic protocol for Internet electronic mail transport:<br />

► RFCs 821 <strong>and</strong> 974 were consolidated into RFC 2821, which is not the current<br />

STD 10. However, RFC 2821 notes that it does not change or add new<br />

functionality from that listed in 821 <strong>and</strong> 974. Instead, it simply serves to<br />

remove the ambiguity from the collection of st<strong>and</strong>ards. It also discusses in<br />

greater depth aspects from those RFCs that have proven to be important in<br />

recent implementations of SMTP.<br />

► RFC 822 is similarly obsoleted by RFC 2822.<br />

556 <strong>TCP</strong>/<strong>IP</strong> <strong>Tutorial</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Technical</strong> <strong>Overview</strong>

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