Behind the @

First of all, what is an email ?

Email stands for electronic mail and it is a method of exchanging
messages between people using electronic devices.

About 180 billion emails are sent each day.

Emails follow physical and digital paths and each path is connected to
hardware.
How is it sent ?
Firstly, to send a email you will need a email client.

When you type a email and hit send, the email goes to an SMTP server.

It is then added to a queue where it waits to be processed.

When it’s the emails turn, the SMTP Server needs to search where the
domain is located. The domain name comes after the @ for example
@gmail.com. Domain names are looked up on a DNS.
The DNS returns the IP address of where the email is going. Now, the SMTP
server knows where to send your email.

It then has to connect with the recipient’s SMTP server.

The router takes the IP address and finds the fastest path, through the
firewall and into the internet. On the internet, the connection ‘hops’ from
router to router.

The last hop exits the internet and passes through the firewall of the
recipient’s network.

Then through the recipient’s router, to the recipients SMTP server. Even
through out all these processes the email has still not been sent, just yet.
All of this happens just to establish a connection. Now let’s establish a
connection the ‘SMTP server’. The sender SMTP server says ‘hello’

The receiving SMTP responds with ‘hi’

The sending SMTP says ‘I want to send an email’. There is a DNS validation
that the sender is who they say they are.

If valid (not spoofing) the receiving SMTP responds with ‘OK’

The sending SMTP pushes the email to the router for delivery. The router
breaks the email up into pieces (packets).

The packets are sent one at a time.

The recipient’s router pieces the email back together packet by packet.

The email is delivered to the SMTP server. It is checked for spam against 3 rd party
services and/or internal databases.

If all is okay, it goes into an email queue where it is picked up by a POP3 mail
server.

It is then finally retrieved by the email client, where it is checked against a series
of spam rules before being viewed. All this happens at near the speed of light.