SMTP Commands

The existence of SMTP Commands electronic mail dates far back to the early sixties just about the same time when SMTP Commands began to take root though it was not until 1982 when it was standardized. The Information Sciences Institute took the initiative to lay out standard format that would see Simple Mail Transfer Protocol operate on the same platform that it is in the present day format. The Simple Mail Electronic Transfer Protocol gained faster popularity especially with ARPANET which meant that older complicate methodology of transferring mail from one mainframe to the other. This mail protocol has since been revised on many a time since 1982, though the primary means of sending and receiving mail has largely remained the same as what is found today.

SMTP Commands

The method refers to a protocol which is based on text. Simple Mail Text Protocol-SMTP initially did not support the delivery of binary data but since it was based on text, it then implied that the implementation of this protocol was not complicated, neither was it hard to maintain. With the Advent of Multiple Internet Mail Extensions and its subsequent popularity during the late 80’s it became possible to encode and send binary data by way of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Today, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is the one protocol which dominates sending as well as receiving email via the internet. Any administrator would jealously guard the know-how of this protocol as it is very essential.

It is not hard to learn how text-based smtp commands protocol works. Compared to any other program that is capable of sending data on ASCII, similar to Telnet, the only thing that is needed is for you to communicate directly with a server attached to Simple Mail Text Protocol. Mail transaction is delivered by way of SMTP and if the sending command does not complete the transaction in full, the faulty message is then dropped. A complete transaction identifies the originator of the mail, who must provide the recipient or recipients if they are many, after which the message body is sent.

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol- smtp commands can be described as a five-stage execution process. These are filtered into parts like Handshake, Send Reply address, Send Recipients, Send message data and finally End Transaction. At the moment you make connection to Simple Mail Text Protocol server say, on port 25, the mail sender is required to wait for the recipient to accept the connection and there after identify itself. After this identification, the receiver must use the Hello command to do so. However, mail servers expect each and every sender as well as recipient to identify itself by the use of a domain name. Usually this process is meant to establish the identity of the server by way of MX record look-up. At this stage, the receiving server must not ignore the connection even if the sender has not been identified nor verified. All the above stages constitute Handshake Stage.

SMTP Commands – Conclusion

After the respective servers have executed the handshake process, then that marks the beginning of Simple Mail Text Protocol transaction, thus commands could be delivered to the server. If you wish to view the commands which are supported by the server, you only need to send “HELP” command whereas the SMTP server should be able to respond with a message text detailing the SMTP Commands which are supported.

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