What is a mail server?

[ru60hz]

for newbie on networking like me, i hope somebody could give
some light about my question. what is a mail server, what is it
use for, and probably how to make one or is it possible to
make one at home?

[JorgeM]

A mail server is a host that provides email services. They generally can send and receive, store mail for users and support a variety of email protocols. It is possible to set up a mail server wherever you have a TCP/IP network.

[ru60hz]

Hi jorgeM, thanks for the reply.
Our company probably has an email server, i'm not sure, how can i know that without bothering our admin, and if we have one is it possible that my emails are stored there?
By the way i'm using gmail and yahoo mail.

[BlazeEagle]

ru60hz,

I assume your company provided you with an email address for you to use for company purposes. If so, That obviously means they have an email server.

Depending upon a setting in the software you use for email, It can be set to leave a copy of each email on the server even though your email was downloaded off the server or it can be set to download email without leaving a copy on your companies server.

[JorgeM]

So if your company has a domain name, you can start by querying DNS to find out if they have an MX record. That would indicate the presence of an SMTP server. Note that the SMTP may or may not actually be the server that hold mailboxes. It depends on how many servers in that infrastructure.

Open a command prompt, type NSLOOKUP, hit enter.

Type "set type=MX", no quotes and hit enter. Then type the domain name.

This will at least get you started. It would be easier though just to call your help desk for more help.

[abhishekabhi]

HI

Email server is host that provides email address.

[Justinvzepeda]

A email hosting server is an program that gets inbound e-mail from local customers and distant senders and ahead confident e-mail for distribution. A computer devoted to running such applications is also known as a email hosting server. Ms Return, qmail, Exim and sendmail are among the more common email hosting server applications.

[brylle]

Every email that is sent passes through a series of mail servers along its way to its intended recipient. Although it may seem like a message is sent instantly - zipping from one PC to another in the blink of an eye - the reality is that a complex series of transfers takes place. Without this series of mail servers, you would only be able to send emails to people whose email address domains matched your own - i.e., you could only send messages from one example.com account to another example.com account.

[CimmerianX]

Couple of items here for clarification.

Email services can be run on a server. That's established. The Server that services certain domains (i.e. [e-mail]) 'could' be in your network, it 'could' be hosted by a 3rd party company, it 'could' be a cloud style email (i.e. gmail, yahoo mail, etc...).

A server can support more than 1 domain. 1 host can handle mail for company1.com and company2.com at the same time.

All emails will be stored on the server that services a particular domain. These stored emails will be there until you view and/or retrieve them using a mail app or a web page.

A client can be setup to pull mail from a mail server and then delete the mail form the server (because you now have it on your machine). However, it can also be set to leave aa copy on the server.

Web based emails are almost always left on the server until you delete them. Gmail and yahoo are examples.

Even if you delete mail from the servers, any good admin will have backups of the hosts and potentially, backups of your emails.

[brownmarsh12]

Under User Information, do the following:
In the Your Name box, type your full name the way that you want it to appear to other people.
In the E-mail Address box, type your e-mail user name, followed by @yahoo.com.
Under Server Information, do the following:
In the Incoming mail server (POP3) box, type pop.mail.yahoo.com.
In the Outgoing mail server (SMTP) box, type smtp.mail.yahoo.net.
Under Logon Information, do the following:
In the User Name box, type your user name. Do not include @yahoo.com.
In the Password box, type your password.
Select the Remember password check box.

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