1.

Most email agents allow you to send email in carbon-copy (cc:) and also in blind-
carbon-copy (bcc:) to a recipient. How does a SMTP server supports these two types
of recipients ?
Answer:
 SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is dedicated for email transmission.
Each email sending activity is an SMTP session. It consists of the commands
exchange between an SMTP client – the sender, and the SMTP server – the
receiver.
 MAIL defines the sender of the message and establishes the return
address as well. The “From” command refers to MAIL. MAIL is
issued once per session, so you can’t send one and the same message
from several senders at once.
 RCPT settles the recipients of the message. It includes a list of email
addresses, which later will be transformed to “To”, “Cc”, and “Bcc” as
well. RCPT commands are repeated – they are issued once per each
recipient. At this step, there is no difference between primary,
secondary, or hidden email receivers.
 DATA determines the content of the message. It includes everything
that the recipient will see as an incoming message: both headers and
the body of the message. It means that when you get a new message,
you can see
 In SMTP, Bcc is not printed out to DATA like message headers. Even if you are Bcc’ed
recipient, you won’t see your email address in the list. 

2. In the early days, email was read by using tools such as /bin/mail or more advanced
text-based mail readers such as pine or elm . Today, emails are stored on dedicated
servers and retrieved by using protocols such as POP_ or IMAP. From the user’s
viewpoint, can you list the advantages and drawbacks of these two protocols ?
Answer:

POP
 Advantages
 For email users, the email is downloaded to the computer itself. So that
users can read their messages when they are offline.
 Opening downloaded attachments is quick and easy because they are
already downloaded.
 It requires less storage as all the emails are stored on the local PC.
 The storage capacity of email is limited by the size of your computer’s
hard disk.
 It is very popular, it is easy to configure and use.

 Drawbacks
 Email cannot be accessed from another computer (unless configured to
do so).
 It can be difficult for a user to export a local mail folder.
 Entire folders of emails can be corrupted, possibly causing you to lose
an entire mailbox at once.
  Email attachments can contain viruses that can cause great harm to
your PC if they are opened and sometimes virus scanners are unable to
detect them.

IMAP
 Advantages:
 Synchronization
 IMAP can be accessed on the Web without an email client.
 The status of emails and folders is maintained between
sessions, even if the user changes computers.
 Email can be checked from any computer at any time.
 Folders and message status are synchronized.
 Emails only exist on the server in the IMAP protocol, they are
safe if the computer is lost or destroyed.
 Easy Migration
 Migrating from one computer to another does not required
downloading all messages again, since they are manipulated
remotely.
 If hard drive space is at a premium, IMAP is ideal.

 Drawbacks
 Performance and Maintenance
 IMAP can be complex to maintain, and thus some hosts do not
support the protocol.
 It uses the host's hard drive space, and most enforce storage
quotas for their users.
 IMAP can be slower to load messages than IMAP.
 IMAP mail is only available when connected and is not
available when offline.
 Some email programs have difficulty supporting IMAP, though
browser-based solutions are often available.

3. The TCP protocol supports 65536 different ports numbers. Many of these port
numbers have been reserved for some applications. The official repository of the
reserved port numbers is maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
(IANA) on http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers 28 . Using this in-
formation, what is the default port number for the POP3 protocol ? Does it run on top
of UDP or TCP?
Answer:
 POP3 protocol default port number is 110.
 POP3 does run on top of TPC but not on UDP. UDP only sends datagrams
and does not manage connection, retransmission, or data sequencing. For
protocols that can stand losing data or prefer a data pacing strategy other than
what TCP provides.
  The server starts POP3 service by listening on TCP port 110. When a client
wishes to use POP3 for email retrieval, it establishes a TCP connection with
the server host. Once this connection is established, the POP3 server sends a
greeting

4. The Post Office Protocol (POP) is a rather simple protocol described in RFC 1939.
POP operates in three phases. The first phase is the authorization phase where the
client provides a username and a password. The second phase is the transaction phase
where the client can retrieve emails. The last phase is the update phase where the
client finalises the transaction. What are the main POP commands and their
parameters? When a POP server returns an answer, how can you easily determine
whether the answer is positive or negative?
Answer:
 Minimal POP3 Commands:

USER name valid in the AUTHORIZATION state

STAT valid in the TRANSACTION state

 Optional POP3 Commands:

APOP name digest valid in the AUTHORIZATION state

TOP msg n valid in the TRANSACTION state

 POP3 Replies:

+OK
-ERR
 We can determine whether the answer is positive or negative with this +OK
and -ERR Replies. If POP server return +OK it means the answer is positive,
and if server return -ERR then it means the answer is negative.

5. On smartphones, users often want to avoid downloading large emails over a slow
wireless connection. How could a POP client only download emails that are smaller
than 5 KBytes?
Answer:
 In POP3 Options configure:
 Check every (minutes) - Specify the download interval in minutes.
  Do not deliver emails larger than - Specify a maximum download size in
KBytes. If the email exceeds this size, it will not be downloaded.
 If mail is larger, then: - Choose to delete an email larger than the maximum
allowed size, or send a message to the postmaster.

 Once saved, the configured details take effect. Emails larger than the specified size
are deleted or a message is sent to the postmaster.

6. Open a POP session with the lab’s POP server (nostromo.info.ucl.ac.be) by using the
username and pass- word that you received. Verify that your username and password
are accepted by the server.
Answer:


7. The lab’s POP server contains a script that runs every minute and sends two email
messages to your account if your email folder is empty. Use POP to retrieve these two
emails and provide the secret message to your teaching assistant.
Answer: