Email accounts free

Brief introduction:

Before exploring into the world of E-Mail account free, let us first understand the meaning of E-Mail. The word E-Mail, some people prefer to write as e-mail is a short form of the word electronic mail. The process of composing, sending, storing and finally delivering the message over the internet or intranet is called E-Mail. We all know what is internet (A publicly accessible worldwide network of internally connected computer networks is called as Internet). Intranet can be called as a private computer network which securely connects different parts of an organization and transfer information within its employees.

Evolution of E-Mail:

In the year 1961 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) a project was undertaken in the name of CTSS (compatible time-sharing system). It allowed multiple users to log into the IBM 7094, a second generation mainframe computer from remote dial-up (Networking via telephone connections) terminals, so that files can be stored into the disk of IBM 7094. This new ability encouraged users to share information in new ways. E-Mail started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate among them. This was only the beginning. By 1966 came network E-Mail, which allowed users to communicate between different computers.

ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) of the U.S. Department of Defense also made a significant contribution to the evolution of E-Mail. Electronic mail is a type of networked communication technology that was developed along with the evolution of the Internet. Exchanging electronic message in one form or another has existed from the early days of timesharing computers. After the creation of ARPANET the ability to e-mail in a networking environment was developed. This is how it has evolved into the powerful e-mail technology which is the most widely used application over the Internet today.

How E-Mail Works:

To understand how E-Mail works we must look back to the old system of delivering a normal letter. A normal letter when dropped in a post box travels via different postal stations along the way to its final destination. Similarly, E-Mail generates from one computer (which is like a local post office, source), which may be a client PC, will go to another computer, which is known as the mail server (that is just like the Central Post Office in a City). From here the mail travels over the Internet and reaches to the destination mail server. It is stored then in an electronic mailbox until the recipient retrieves it from his mailbox to his home/office computer. This whole process can take seconds, allowing you to quickly communicate with people around the world at any time of the day or night. Can you ever imagine that in real life a normal letter will be delivered as fast like that? In fact, the good old mail system is taking help from the facilities electronic mail provides. Already in several countries electronic letter/money transfer has been in effect for quite some time.

About E-Mail Address:

A typical E-Mail address is like Susan@myemail.com (this address is shown just for an example). We will now look into the architecture of an E-Mail address. An E-Mail address is expressed as name@domain. Here in our example ?Susan? can be considered at name which has to be unique in the mymail.com internet domain. Each internet domain has an E-Mail server which exclusively handles e-mail. At the same time there can be several E-Mail servers in one domain depending on the traffic. An E-Mail server connects the Internet?s domain name system for getting the IP address of the recipient?s domain using a protocol called SMTP (Simple mail transfer protocol) and delivers at that domain which is then delivered to the recipient?s mailbox. When the recipient will check for new mails at the mailbox, immediately it will be delivered.

About E-Mail Headers:

Just like in a normal letter one can easily know the source of the letter from the stamp of the originating post office and its path, similarly in an E-Mail one can trace from where the mail has come. Every mail has a header. There are several sections in a header out of which the most important sections are Return-Path, Delivered-to, Received, From, To, Subject, Date, and Reply-To. From these sections it is possible to know the route of an E-Mail. The Sender?s IP address (address of the sender?s PC) is also stored in an E-Mail.

About E-Mail Service Providers:

Nowadays there are several web-mail service providers. The main among them are Hotmail at www.hotmail.com and Yahoo at www.yahoo.com both of them has a huge user base. Recently, Google the famous search engine has come out its mail service in the name of gmail at www.gmail.com. At this point Google mail though free, is on invitation only. There are also several other popular E-Mail service providers like AIM Mail, Mail.com, FastMail, Runbox, Rediffmail, Lycos Mail, Excite Mail and Hushmail. Yahoo and Hotmail are the two main competitors at this point of time. Both of these mail providers have gone through lot of service changes. The changes range from a simple new looking display page to providing huge mailbox to the users. Most of these service providers give free web mail to its users. But at the same time many of them like Yahoo, Hotmail have also launched premium E-Mail services which is available against certain yearly charges.

One can easily think when there are free web-based e-mail services available will anyone pay to use this facility? The answer is ?Yes?. In paid services the user gets several facilities which are not given in free services. The most important and highlighted feature is POP3 service.

Imagine, someone has several E-Mail accounts in Yahoo or Hotmail. Now to check every account the user has to open one after another account in his browser and check mails. Now that can be annoying. To solve the problem we have E-Mail clients (software which resides in your PC and checks mail from different accounts) like Microsoft Outlook Express, Eudora, IncrediMail, Mozilla Thuderbird etc. Earlier once we install this software in our PC the software used to do our job easily. But once these premium mail services from the leaders have come into picture the problem started to surface. Both Yahoo and Hotmail have stopped providing POP3 access to the users. They no longer discloses the POP3 address of the mail server which is required to run E-Mail clients like outlook, thunderbird etc. Other service providers like GMail is providing free pop3 access which means you can easily set up these services in your E-Mail client. Extra facilities include getting news, weather, stocks etc. in your mail page. When you are viewing your mails you can also have a look at these features.

With the success of E-Mail the world has become smaller. Now you can find your classmates, you can find someone through E-Mail or vice versa. The people-to-people interaction have increased manifold. Sending an E-Mail is so easy and it reaches its destination so fast that more and more people are using this service.

At the same time the E-Mail user community is facing a problem from SPAM mails. Every day several E-Mail users all across the globe gets a lot of SPAM mails. It is an abuse of E-Mail system through which through which unsolicited, bulk messages are sent to various users. Of course those mails can easily be deleted but doing it on a regular basis annoys the user. To tackle this problem all the E-Mail service providers have given users a tool to fight these junk mails which is also known as SPAM mails. When you receive these types of E-Mails just click the SPAM button to get rid of them.

Since the beginning till date E-Mail has come a long way. New developments are happening daily. So many new facilities are given to the users that one needs to always update to keep pace and to make best use of the service.