Question: Explain POP, SMTP and IMAP protocols.

Answer: POP: The Post Office Protocol is an application-level protocol within an intranet which are used by the local e-mail clients to send and retrieve e-mails from a remote server those are connected using TCP/IP. POP is one of the most prevalent protocol fro the usage of e-mail. The POP and its procedures support the end-users with dial-up network connections.

POP allows the users to retrieve e-mail when connected and later allows viewing and altering the retrieved messages. This is done with a promising feature � without staying connected. The process of using emails over POP is to connect, retrieve the messages, and store them on the user�s PC as a new message. Later these messages can be �deleted from the server� and disconnecting the server � makes POP a distinguished protocol.

SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, for sending email between �servers�. Most of the emailing systems implement the messages over internet use SMTP. The message sent from one server to another server, and then the message can be retrieved by an email client. The client uses either POP or IMAP. In addition to this process, SMTP is also generally used for message sending and retrieval from a mail client to a mail server. This is the reason why the need of POP or IMAP server and the SMTP servers at the time of configuring the email application.

IMAP: Short for Internet Message Access Protocol. This is another most prevalent protocol of internet standard for email usage apart from POP. Usually all the modern email server and client supports these two protocols for transmitting the email messages. For Example Gmail server uses to transmit the message to a client such as Mozilla Thunderbird and Microsoft Outlook.

IMAP is an application layer protocol over internet that is operating from port no. 143 that allows the accessibility of email on a remote server by a client. IMAP supports the online and offline (disconnected) modes of operations. Usually the email clients using IMAP utilizes the facility of leaving the message on the server. The message lasts until the user explicitly deletes them. IMAP also allows multiple clients to have the accessibility of the same mailbox.