UNIT - V Application Layer –Domain name system, SNMP, Electronic Mail; the World WEB, HTTP,

Streaming audio and video.

Application Layer
The application layer in the OSI model is the closest layer to the end user which means that the application
layer and end user can interact directly with the software application. The application layer programs are
based on client and servers.

The Application layer includes the following functions:

o Identifying communication partners: The application layer identifies the availability of
communication partners for an application with data to transmit.

o Determining resource availability: The application layer determines whether sufficient network
resources are available for the requested communication.

o Synchronizing communication: All the communications occur between the applications requires
cooperation which is managed by an application layer.

Services of Application Layers

o Network Virtual terminal: An application layer allows a user to log on to a remote host. To do so,
the application creates a software emulation of a terminal at the remote host. The user's computer
talks to the software terminal, which in turn, talks to the host. The remote host thinks that it is
communicating with one of its own terminals, so it allows the user to log on.
o File Transfer, Access, and Management (FTAM): An application allows a user to access files in a
remote computer, to retrieve files from a computer and to manage files in a remote computer. FTAM
defines a hierarchical virtual file in terms of file structure, file attributes and the kind of operations
performed on the files and their attributes.

o Addressing: To obtain communication between client and server, there is a need for addressing.
When a client made a request to the server, the request contains the server address and its own
address. The server response to the client request, the request contains the destination address, i.e.,
client address. To achieve this kind of addressing, DNS is used.

o Mail Services: An application layer provides Email forwarding and storage.

o Directory Services: An application contains a distributed database that provides access for global
information about various objects and services.

Authentication: It authenticates the sender or receiver's message or both.

E-mail :
E-mail system consists of two subsystems
- the user agent, and
- the message transfer agents
- User Agents :
They allow people to read and send e-mail they are local programs that provide a

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 command based, menu based, or graphical method for interacting with e-mail system.
- Message transfer agents :
They are responsible for moving the messages from the source to the destination. They
are typically system daemons that run in the background and move e-mail through the
system.
Typically, e-mail system support five basic functions given below.
(i) Composition :
It refers to the process of creating messages and answers.
(ii) Transfers :
it refers to moving messages from the originator to the recipient. This requires, establishing a
connection to the destination (or) some intermediate machine, outputting the message and
releasing the connection.
(iii) Reporting :
It informs the originator about the status of the message, whether it is delivered, rejected(or) lost.
(iv) Displaying :
These provides the incoming messages to be read by the people. Simple conversions and
formatting is performed.
(v) Disposition :
It is the final step and concerns what the recipient does with the message after receiving it.
Other Services of E-mail include:
Mailboxes :
Used for storing incoming E-mail.
Mailing List = List of e-mail addresses to whom, identical copies of messages need to be
sent.
Registered E-mail = It allows the originator to know that his mail has arrived.
High priority E-mail = Secret E-mail etc.

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User Agent :
A user agent is normally a program that accepts a variety of commands for composing, receiving
and replying to messages as well as manipulating mail boxes.
Sending E-mail :
To send an e-mail a user must provide the message, the destination address and some other
parameters. The message can be produced in any text editor (or) the one built in user agent. The
destination address must be in the format that the user agent can deal with i.e., either DNS
address (or) X.400 address. Most e-mail systems support mailing list, so that a user can send the
same message to a list of people with a single command.
Reading E-mail :
When a user agent is started up, it will look at the user’s mailbox for incoming e-mail before
displaying anything on the screen. It then announces the number of messages in the mail box(or )
a one line summary of each one.
In a sophisticated system the user can specify the fields to be displayed by providing the display
format.
Eg:
1. Message numbers
2. Flag etc.
Message format:
Message consist of a primitive envelope, some number of header field, blank line followed by
message body. In normal usage, the user agent builds a message and passes it. To the message
transfer agent which then uses some of the header fields to construct the actual envelope.
Principal header include:
To :
DNS address of primary recipient.
CC :
DNS address of secondary recipient.
In terms of delivery there is no distinction between primary and secondary (carbon copies).
BCC :
Similar to CC, allows people to send copies to third parties without primary and secondary
knowing it.
From :
Who wrote the message.
Sender :
The one who sent the message.
Received :
Added by each message transfers agent along the way used for finding bugs in routing system.
Return path :
Added by final message transfer agent intended to tell how to get back to the sender etc.
Explain how e-mail works?
SMTP :

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E-mail is delivered by having the source machine establish a TCP connection to destination.
Listening to this port is an E-mail daemon that speaks SMTP. This daemon accepts incoming
connections and copies messages from them to appropriate mail boxes. If the message cannot
be delivered, an error message is given.
After establishing a TCP connection, the sending machine operates as a client and waits
for receiving entity to talk first. The server starts by giving its identity and informing whether (or)
not it is prepared to receive mail. If it is not, the client releases the connection.
If the server is ready, the client announces whom the E-mail is coming from and whom it is
going to. If the recipient exists, the server gives a go-ahead to send the message. Then the client
sends the message and the server acknowledges it. When the E-mail has been exchanged then
the connection is released.
E-mail Gateways :
SMTP does not work, when both sender and receiver are not on internet. In order to overcome
this difficulty E-mail gateways are used.
Here the sender establishes a TCP connection to the gateway and then uses SMTP to transfer
the message. The daemon on the gateway then puts the message in a buffer of messages
destined for host2. Late TPU (similar to TCP) is established with host2 and the message is
transmitted.
Final Delivery :
Post Office Protocol (POP)
Used to fetch e-mail from a remote mail box, has commands for user to logon, logout, fetch and
delete messages. If fetches the mail and stores it in local system.
Interactive mail access protocol (IMAP)
This protocol is used by a person having multiple systems (office, residence, car, etc). Here the E-
mail server maintains a central repository that can be accessed from any machine. IMAP does not
copy E-mail as POP.

DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM

Generally host names, mailboxes and other resources are represented by using ASCII sting such
as rgm@vsnl.net.in.But the network itself only understands binary address i.e., the address
written in the binary form. So we need some mechanism to convert the ASCII strings to network
addresses in binary. It is easy to maintain the host names and their IP addresses in file for a
network of few hundred hosts. For a network of thousand hosts it is very difficult.
The Domain Name System, DNS is a distributes data that is used by TCP/IP application to
map between host names and IP addresses, and to provide electronic mail routing information.
We use the term distributed because no single site on the Internet knows all the information. Each
site maintains its own data base information and runs a server program that other systems
(clients) across the Internet can query. It is a good example of a TCP/IP client-server application.

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The DNS provides the protocol that allows client and server to communicate with each other.
DNS is defined in RFC’s 1034 and 1035.
The DNS identifies each host on the internet with a unique name that identifies it as
unambiguously as its IP address as follows. To map a name onto an IP address, an application
program calls a library procedure called the resolver, passing it the name as a parameter. The
‘resolver’ sends a UDP packet to a local DNS server, which then looks up the name and returns
the IP address to the resolver, which then returns it to the caller. To create names that are unique
and at the same time decentralized and easy to change, the TCP/IP designers have chosen a
hierarchical system made up of a number of labels separated by dots.
THE DNS NAME SPACE
Internet is divided it several hundred top level domains, where each domain covers many hosts.
Each domain is partitioned into sub domains, these are further partitioned and so on. Thus DNS is
implemented using a tree in which each node represents one possible label of up to 63 characters.
The root of the tree is a special node with new label as shown in fig. Any comparison of label
considers uppercase and lower-case characters the same i.e., Domain names are case insensitive.
The leaves of the tree represent a company/organization and contain thousands of hosts.
Each domain is named by the path from it to the unnamed root. The components in the
name are separated by periods (dots), that is domain name of any node in the tree is the list of
labels starting at the node, working up to the root using the period (dot ) separate the labels.
The domain names that ends with a period is called an absolute domain name or fully
qualified domain name(FQDN).An example is vax.ugc,central.edu.
If domain does not end with a period, it is assumed that the name needs to be completed. How the
name is completed on the DNS software being used. If the incomplete names consist of two or
more labels, it might be considered to be complete. Otherwise, local addition might be added to the
right of the name. The name vax might be completed by adding the local suffix.ugc.central.edu.
The right most label in the name corresponds to the level of the tree closest to the root
(lowest), and left-most to the level farthest from the root(highest).The tree is divided into three
domains: generic, country and reverse as shown in fig.

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 Root-level
Un-named root

arpa com edu gov mil org ae

int net in us

Second level
Domains united Arab JNTU
Emirates
In-addr control

rgm

164 ugc aict

e

ece cse

45 vax rgm

Vax.ugc.control.edu ece.rmg.jntu.in

34 Generic domain Country

Domain

61

4.61.in-addr arpa. Reverse

Domain

DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM

Generic Domain: The generic domain is also called the organization domain, divides registered
hosts according to their generic behaviour. Generic domain names, read left to the right , start
with the most specific information about the host(e.g. the name of the workstation) and become
more and more general with each label until they reach the rightmost label, which describes the
broadcast affiliation of the normal host i.e., the nature of the organization.

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The first level of the generic domain convention allows seven possible three character labels
describing organization type.

1. Com. commercial organization.

2. edu.: educational institution .
3. gov.: government institution.
4. int.: international organization.
5. mil.: military group.
6. net.: Network support center.
7. org. organizations other than listed above.

Each domain name corresponds to a particular IP address. To find the address, the resolution
application begins searching with the first level. As a much is found, a pointer leads to the next
level and finally to the associated IP address.

Country Domain: The country domain convention follows the same format as generic domain,
but uses two character country abbreviation in place of three character organizational
abbreviations at the first level shown in table. Second level labels can be organizational or they
can be more specific national designations.

Table: SOME DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM COUNTRY CODE

Country Code Country Name Country Code Country Name

AE Arubeme rates IN India

AU Australia IT Italy
BE Belgium JP Japan
CA Canada KW Kuwait
CH Switzerland NL Netherlands
DE Germany NO Norway
DK Denmark NZ Newzeland
ES Spain SE Sweden
FI Finland US United States of
America
GR Greece

Reverse Domain: If we have the IP address and need the domain name, you can reverse
domain the functions of DNS.
The domain can be inserted onto the tree in two ways. For example ugc.control.edu could equally
be listed under the country domain as cs.yale.ct.us.

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To create a new domain, permission is required of the domain in which it will be included. For
example, rgm group was started under aicte and is known as rgm.aicte.control.edu. It needs
permission from which use manages aicte.control.edu. Naming follows organizational boundaries,
not physical networks.

RESOURCE RECORDS
Every domain in the DNS tree maintains a set of Resource Records, which are connected to it.
For a leaf node i.e., single host, the most common resource record is its IP address. When a
resolver gives a name to DNS, it gets back called as resource records associated with that name.
The original function of a DNS is to map domain names on to the resource records.
A resource record is a five tuple, in ASCII text they are represented as

Domain-name Time-to live type class value.

 The domain-name tells the domain to which this record belongs. This is the primary
search key used to satisfy queries.
 The time-to live field gives information regarding the stability of the record. A large value
such as 86-400(number of seconds in one day) indicates that the information is highly
stable. The small value such as 60(1 minute) indicates that the information is highly
volatile.
 The type of field tells what kind of record it is, some of the type records are listed in table
5.3.

S.No Type Meaning Value

1. SoA Start of Authority Parameter for this zone
2. A IP address of a host 32 bit integer
3. Mx Mail Exchange Priority
4. NS Name Server Name of the server for this domain
5. CNAME Canonical name Domain Name
6. PTR Pointer Alias for an IP address
7. TXT Text Uninterpreted ASCII text

1. The SOA record provides name of the primary source of information about (a) name
servers zone (b) e-mail address of its administration (c) various flags and (d) various time
outs.
2. The record A, holds a 32 bit IP address of the host. If a host connects two or more
networks, each case it has one type of a resource record per network connection.
3. The MX record specifies the name of domain prepared to accept e-mail for the specified
domain. It allows the host that is not on the internet to receive e-mail from internet sites.
4. NS record specifies Name server.

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 5. CNAME record specifies allows the aliases to be created.
6. PTR is a regular DNS data type whose interpretation depends on the context on which it is
found.
7. The TXT record allows domains to identify themselves in arbitrary way i.e., it is for user
convenience.

 The fourth field in the general structure of resource record is the class. It may be
Internet information, used IN and for non-internet information, other codes are
used.
 The value field can be number, domain name or an ASCII string.

NAME SERVERS
The Inter network Information center (Inter NIC) manages the top level domain names. The Inter
NIC delegates responsibility for assigning names to different organizations. Each organization is
responsible for a specific portion of the DNS tree structure. Internet professionals refer to these
areas of responsibilities as zones.

Alternatively, the Inter NIC delegates responsibility for assigning names with in a specific zone to
specific organizations. Each zone contains some part of the tree and also contains name servers
holding the authoritative information about the zone. Each zone contains one primary name
server and one or more secondary name servers. Primary name server and one or more
secondary name servers. Primary name server gets its information from a file on its disk, the
secondary name server and get their information from the primary name server. One or more
servers are located outside the zone, for each zone, for reliability. The number of name servers
needed in a zone depends on the zone boundaries.

Let us consider an example shown in fig connected with another domain. here a resolver on
“ece.rgm.jntu.in” wants to know the IP address of the host “rgm.aicte.control.edu” can be
explained in 8 steps.

Step 1: It sends a query to the local name server rgm.jntu.in.This query asks a record of type A
and the class IN.
Step 2: If the local name server had no such domain and knows nothing about it, it may ask a few
other near by name servers if none of them know, it sends a UDP packet to the server for “edu”
given in its database (see fig) edu.server.net.
Step 3: It forwards the request to the name server control.edu.
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 Step 4: And in turn this forwards the request aicte.control.edu, which has authoritative resource
records.
This is the request from client to a server, the resource record requested will work its way
back in step 5 to step 8.Once these records get back to rgm.jntu.in name server, they will be
entered into a cache/memory. However this information is not authoritative, since changes made
at aicte.control.edu will not be propagated to all the memories in the world. For this reason cache
should not live too long, so time-to-live field is used in each resource record. It tells the name
server how long to cache records.

jntu.rgm edu name control name aicte name

Source domain name server server server server

ece.rgm. edu.server. Control. edu aicte.control.

rgm.jntu. in net
jntu.in edu

Resource record

WORKING OF A RESOLVER FOR A DOMAIN IN 8 STEPS

ELECTRONIC MAIL

Electronic mail or E-mail as it is popularly called, is a system that allows a person or a group to
electronically communicate with each other through a netork. Presently people can now receive
and send e-mail to:
 nearly any country in the world.
 one of millions of computer users.
 many users at once.
 computer programs.
The first e-map systems consisted of file transfer protocols, with the convention that the first line
of each message contained the recipient address. Some of the complaints at that time were

1. Sending a message to a group of people was inconvenient.

2. Messages had no internal structure, making computer processing difficult.
3. The sender never knew if a message arrived or not.
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 4. It is difficult to forward the mails.
5. It is not possible to create and send messages containing a mixer of text, drawing
facsimile and voice.

After a decade of competition, email systems based on RFC822 are widely used, where all the
above problems are solved.

BASIC FUNCTIONS

Email systems support five basic functions, which are: Composition, Transfer, Reporting,
Displaying and Disposition.
1. Composition is a process for creating the messages and answers. This can be done by
text editor, outside the mailer, the system will provide assistance in addressing and
numerous header fields attached to each message. For eample:when answering a
message, the e mail system can extract the originator’s address from the incoming e-mail
and automatically insert it into the address space in reply.
2. Transfer refers to moving of messages from the source to the recipent. In some cases,
connection establishment is needed with the destination, outputting the message and
releasing the connection. The e-mail system should do automatically this.
3. Reporting is used to indicate the originator what happened to the message i.e.,
confirmation of the message delivery. Was it delivers successfully? Was it rejected? Was
it lost? Did errors occur?
4. Displaying It refers to read the incoming e-mail by the person. Sometimes conversion is
required or a special viewer must be invoked.
5. Disposition It concerns what the recipient does with the message after receiving it. The
possibilities are
(a) Throwing it away before reading
(b) Throwing it away after reading.
(c) Saving it and so on. It is also possible to forward them or process them in other
ways.
In addition to these basic services, most of e-mail systems provide a large variety of advanced
features such as
(a) It allows to create a mailbox to store incoming e-mail.
(b) It allows to have a mailing list, to which the e-mail messages have to send.
(c) Carbon copies, high priority email, secret email, registered email etc.

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 THE USER AGENT
The user agent is a program that allows users to read reply to, forward, save and compose
messages. User agents for electronic mail are sometimes called mail readers. Some user agents
have menu or icon driven interface that requires a mouse, some other requires only 1 character
command from keyboard.

Sending e-mail: To send an email message the user must provide

(a) message
(b) destination address and
(c) priority or security levels (options).

 Message can be produced with a free standing text editor, a word processing
program or by using a text editor built into the user agents. The format of an e-mail
message is similar to that of a conventional letter.
There are two main parts: Header and body.
The header contains out name and address, the name and address of the person it’s
being sent to, the name and address of the person who is being sent a copy, the date of the
message and the subject when we receive an e-mail from someone, the header tells us where it
came from, what it is about, how it was sent and when.

The body is the place where we write the contents of what we want to communicate. The
message sent should be simple and direct. Body is entirely for human recipient.

 The designation address must be in a format that the user agent can deal with. The basic
form of e-mail address is
User name @host name.subdomain.domain.

The text before the sign @(pronounced “at”) specifies the user name of the individual, the text
after the @ sign indicates how the computer system can locate that individual’s mailboxes.
For example
mvs@cs.colorado.edu
Here cs is a sub domain of Colorado is a sub domain of edu.the edu specifies the top-level
domain name.
The number of periods (pronounced as dots) varies from e-mail address.
Reading e-mail: On connecting to the net, the first thing a user usually does is check his mail, it’s
like checking the mailbox when we go home. The display like fig 5.28 appears on the screen.
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Each line refers to one message. In the fig, the mailbox contains 4 (four) messages. The display
line contains several fields, which provides user profile.

S.No Flag Bytes Sender Subject

1. K 1000 n/p Got the job

2. KA 2000 Smer Request for MP

3. KF 4000 Vimicro Repair of controller

4. 1536 hiq Enquiry of the book

AN EXAMPLE OF THE CONTENTS OF THE MAIL BOX

 The first field is the message number.

 The second field is flags, can contain,
K-means that, message was read previously and kept in mail box.
A-means the message has already answered and
F-message has been forwarded to someone else.
 The third field indicates the length of the message in bytes.
 Fourth field tells who sent the message, this field is simple extracted from the message, so
this field contains initials, log in name, first name etc.
 The last field is a ‘subject field’ gives brief summary of the message.
MESSAGE FORMATS
The e-mail message format was defined in RFC 822.There are two types: ASCII e-
mail and multimedia extensions.
ASCII e-mails using RFC 822: The e-mail message consists of a primitive envelope, some
number of header fields, a blank like and then message body.
Each header field consists of a single line of ASCII text containing the field name, a colon, and
a value of RFC.
The list of header fields related to message transport are
 A recipient’s address or “To”
 A sender’s address or “From”
 A subject.

The email header may additionally contain.

 A List of “Cd”: This is a list of e-mail or ‘carbon copies’ addresses to whom a copy of the
message is to be delivered. Multiple e-mail addresses in the “Cc” field are separated by a
comma.
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  A List of “Bc”: This is same as “Cc” except that this is a carbon copy. The list of recipients
is not visible to the person who receives this message.
 Attached: This is a convenient method to share both data and programs. These files may
be attached or enclosed with an e-mail message.
 Signature: It contains sender’s full name and address or whatever information the sender
wishes to send.
Instead of creating a message from the scratch, we may choose to reply or forward the
messages.
 Replying: When we reply a message, the sender’s address is automatically put in the
“To” header and subject of the original message is reduced proceeded by Re, for the
reply.
 Forwarding: When we forward a message, the subject of the original message is reused,
with prefix “FW”.We must specify the e-mail address of the recipient of the forward
message.
 Redirecting: Some e-mail programs allow to redirect messages. It is similar to forwarding
a message, except that the message retains the original sender in the form header and
adds a notation that the message comes through you.

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions(MIME):

This is the solution defined in 1341 and updated in 1521 for the following problems.
1. Messages in languages with accents.
2. Messages in non Latin alphabets.
3. Messages in languages with out alphabets.
4. Messages not containing text at all.

The basic idea of MIME is to continue the use of RFC 822 format, but to add structure to the
message body defined encoding rules for non ASCII formats. The MIME messages can be sent
using the existing mail programs, and protocols.
The MIME defines five new message header

 MIME-Version: It tells the use agent receiving the message that it is dealing with a MIME
message, and which version of MIME it uses.
 Content-Description: It tells what is there in the message, this header helps the recipient
whether it is worth decoding and reading the message.

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  Content-Transfer Encoding: It tells how the body is wrapped for transmission through a
network that may object to most characters other than letters, numbers and punctuation
marks.
 Content-Type: It specifies the nature of the message body. Seven types are defined in
RFC 1521, each of which has one or more sub types. The type and sub type are
separated by a slash. The sub type must be given explicitly in the header, no defaults are
provided. Table 5.4 shows the list of types and sub types.
TYPE AND SUB TYPE FIELDS DEFINED IN RFC 1521
S.No Type Sub Type Meaning
1. Text Plain Unformated text
HTML Hyper text mark up language
Rich text Allows a simple mark up language to the
included in the text (standardized general ma rk
up language (SGML)
2. Image GIF To transmit still pictures in GIF format
JPEG To transmit still pictures in JPEG format
PNG To transmit still pictures in portable network
graphics
3. Audio au Sun micro systems sound
Basic Audiable sound
aiff Apple sound
4. Video sgi.movie Silicon graphics movie
MPEG Visual information, the video format is
moving picture experts group MPEG
avi Microsoft audio video interleaved
5. Application Octet stream It is a sequence of uninterrupted bytes
Post Script Which refers the postscript language
produced by Adobe systems and widely
used for describing printed pages.
tex TEX document.
6. Message RFC822 A MIME RFC-822 message (ASCII
characters message)
Partial Break and encapsulated message up into
pieces and send them separately.
External Used for very long message (i.e., video
films)
7. Multiport Mixed Each part to be different with no additional
structure imposed
Alternative Each part must contain the same message
but expressed in a different medium or
Parallel encoding.
Digest All parts must be viewed simultaneously
Many messages are packed together into
composite message.

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 MESSAGE TRANSFER
The message Transfer system, MTS is concerned with relaying messages from originator to the
recipent.The simplest way to do this is to establish a transport connection from source machine to
the destination machine and just transfer the message.
Mail servers are from the core of the e-mail infrastructure.Each recipient has a mail box, located
in one of the mail servers.A typical message starts its journey in the sender’s user agent, travels
to the sender’s main server, and then travels to the recipient mail server where it is deposited in
the recipient mail box.
A mail server needs to be running all the time, waiting for e-mail messages and routing them
approximately.If a mail server crashes or down for an extended period(3-4 days), e-mail can be
lost.There may be a limitation on the size of mail box.Generally once this limit is reached, new
incoming messages are refused until you free up space by deleting some messages.
SIMPLE MAIL TRANSFER PROTOCOL-SMTP
The simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) is the principal application layer protocol for internet e-
mail. It is simple ASCII protocol. It uses the reliable data transfer service of TCP to transfer mail
from the sender’s mail server to the recipient’s mail server. In most application protocols SMTP
has two sides: a client side, which executes on the sender’s mail server and a server side-which
executes on the recipient mail server. When a mail server sends a mail (to other mail server), it
acts as a client SMTP.When a mail server receives a mail (from other mail server), it acts as an
SMTP server.
The SMTP defined in RF821, is at the heart of Internet e-mail.SMTP is much older than HTTP.To
illustrate the basic operation of SMTP, let’s walkthrough a common scenario. Suppose Ramu
wants to send Raju a simple ASCII message.
 Ramu invokes his user agent for e-mail, provides Raju’s e-mail address(example
Raju@some school.edu) composes a message, and instructs the user agent to send the
message.
 Ramu’s user agent sends the message to his mail server, where it is placed in a message
queue.
 The client side of SMTP, running on Ramu’s mail server, sees the message in the
message queue.It opens a TCP connection to a SMTP running Raju’s mail server.
 After some initial SMTP hand shaking, the SMTP client sends Ramu’s message into the
TCP connection.
 At Raju’s mail server host, the server side of SMTP recives the message.Raju’s mail
server then places the message in Raju’s mail box.
 Raju invokes his user agent to read the message at his convenience.
The scenario is summarized in fig.5.29

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 SMTP

Ramu’s mail Raju’s mail

server Internal server

RAMU’S MAIL SERVER TRANSFERS RAMU’S MESSAGE TO RAJU’S MAIL SERVER

Let us now take closer look at how SMTP transfers a message from a sending mail server to a
receiving mail server.
We will see that the SMTP protocol has many similarities with protocols that are used for face-to-
face human interaction.
 The client SMTP has TCP to establish a connection on port 25 to server SMTP.If server is
down, the clients tries again later. Once the connection is established, the server and
client perform some application layer handshaking. During this SMTP handshaking phase,
the SMTP client indicates the e-mail address of the sender and the e-mail address of the
recipient. Once the SMTP client and server have introduced themselves to each other, the
client sends the message, SMTP can count on the reliable data transfer service of TCP to
get the message to the server without errors. The client then repeats this process over the
same TCP connection if it has other message to send to the server; otherwise it instructs
TCP to close the connection.
Even though the SMTP protocol is well defined, a few problems can still arise. These are.
1. Related to the Message Length : Some older implementations cannot handle messages
exceeding 64kB.
2. Related to Time Outs : If the client and server have different time-outs, one of them may
give up while the other is still busy, unexpectedly terminating the connection.
3. Infinite mail storms can be triggered .
To get around some of these problems, extended SMTP (ESMTP) has been defined in
RFC1425.
E-mail Gateways: E-mail using SMTP works best when both the sender and receiver on the
internet and can support TCP connections between sender and receiver.However many

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machines that are not on the internet)because of security problem) still want to send and recive e-
mail from internet sites.
Another problem occurs when the sender speaks only RFC822 and the receiver speaks only
X.400 or some proprietary vendor specific mail protocol.
Both these problems can be solved using application layer e-mail gateways fig.5.30 shows the
gateway.

Host 1 Gate way Message buffer Host 2

Mail Box 1 1 2 2 Mail

Box

TCP connection TCP connection

USE OF EMAIL GATEWAY Network

 Here Host1 speaks only TCP/IP and RFC822, where as host 2 speaks only OSITP 4 ans
X.400.
They can exchange e-mail using an e-mail gateway.
Procedure:
1. Host 1 establishes a TCP connection to gateway and then use SMTP to transfer message
there.
2. The gateway then puts the message in a buffer of messages destined to host 2.
3. A TP4 connection is established between host 2 an the gateway.
4. The message is transferred using OSI equivalent of SMTA.
The problems here are
(a) The Internet address and X.400 address are totally different. Need of elaborating
mapping mechanism between them.
(b) Envelope and header fields are present in one system and are not present in the
other.
MAIL ACCESS PROTOCOL
Till now we have assumed that an users work on machines that are capable of sending and
receiving e-mail. Sometimes this situation is false. For example in an organization, users work on
desktop PCs that are no in the internet and are capable of sending and receiving e-mail from
outside. Instead the organization has one or more e-mail servers that can send and receive e-

Computer Networks UNIT -V

mail. To sned and receive e-mails, a PC must talk to an e-mail server using some kind of delivery
protocol.
There are currently two popular mail access protocols:POP 3(Post office Protocol version3 ) and 1
MAP (internet mail access protocl)
POP3 : POP3 defined in RFC 1939, it is an extremely simple amil access protocol.POP 3 begins
when the user agents (clients) opens a TCP connection to the mail server (the server) on port
100.With the TCP with TCP connection established, POP 3 progress through three phases.
1. Authorization: The user agent sends a user name and a password to authenticate the
user downloading the mail.
2. Transaction: The user agent receives messages. In this phase the user agent can also
mark messages for deletion, remove deletion marks, and obtain mail statistics.
3. Update: During the third phase, update occurs after the client has issued the quit
command, ending the POP3 session. This time the mail server deletes the messages that
were marked for deletion.
IMAP: The Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP), is defined in RFC 2060.It has many features
than POP3 , but it is also significantly maore complex. It was designed to help the user whi uses
multiple computers, perhaps a workstation in the office, a PC at a home and laptop on the
road.The basic idea behind IMAP is for the e-mail server to maintain a central reposition that can
be accessed from any machine.Thus unlike POP 3 , IMAP does not copy email to the user’s
personal machine because the user may have several.
The IMAP has many features.
a) It has commands that permit a user agents to obtain components of messages. This feature is
useful when there is a low bandwidth connection between the user agent and mail server.
b) An IMAP session consists of a client command, server data and a server completion result
response.
The IMAP server has four states.
1. Non Authenticated State: Initial state whenthe connection begins, the user must supply a
user name and password before most commands will be permitted.
2. Authenticated State: The user must select a folder before sending commands that affect
messages.
3. Selected State: The user can issue commands that affect messages.
4. Log Out State: Here the session is terminated.

* * * * *

Computer Networks UNIT -V