considering the simple mail transfer protocol when you work with -mailyou see lot of references to simple mail transfer protocol (smtpof coursethe term looks really techni caland what happens under the covers truly is technicalbut all you really need to know is that it works on the other handunderstanding smtp little more than as "black boxthat takes an -mail from the sender and spits it out at the other end to the recipient can be useful taking the term apart (in reverse order)you see these elementsprotocola standard set of rules -mail work by requiring rules that everyone agrees upon otherwisee-mail would become unreliable mail transferdocuments are sent from one place to anothermuch the same as what the post office does with real mail in -mail' casethe transfer process relies on short commands that your -mail applica tion issues to the smtp server for examplethe mail from command tells the smtp server who is sending the -mailwhile the rcpt to command states where to send it simplestates that this activity goes on with the least amount of effort possible the fewer parts to anythingthe more reliable it becomes if you were to look at the rules for transferring the informationyou would find they're anything but simple for examplerfc is standard that specifies how internet hosts are supposed to work (see rfcs/rfc html for detailsthese rules are used by more than one internet technologywhich explains why most of them appear to work about the same (even though their resources and goals may be differentanotherentirely different standardrfc describes how smtp specifically implements the rules found in rfc (see www faqs org/rfcs/rfc html for detailsthe point isa whole lot of rules are written in jargon that only true geek could love (and even the geeks aren' sureif you want plain-english explanation of how -mail workscheck out the article at com/ -mail-messaging/email htm page of this article (howstuffworks com/ -mailmessaging/email htmdescribes the commands that smtp uses to send informa tion hither and thither across the internet in factif you want the shortest possible descrip tion of smtppage is probably the right place to look understanding what happens when you send -mail -mail has become so reliable and so mundane that most people don' understand what miracle it is that it works at all actuallythe same can be said of the real mail service when you think about itthe likelihood of one particular