Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard for electronic mail (email) transmission. First defined by RFC 821 in 1982, it was last updated in 2008 with the Extended SMTP additions by RFC 5321—which is the protocol in widespread use today.

SMTP by default uses TCP port 25. The protocol for mail submission is the same, but uses port 587. SMTP connections secured by SSL, known as SMTPS, default to port 465 (nonstandard, but sometimes used for legacy reasons).

Although electronic mail servers and other mail transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages, user-level client mail applications typically use SMTP only for sending messages to a mail server for relaying. For receiving messages, client applications usually use either POP3 or IMAP.

Although proprietary systems (such as Microsoft Exchange and IBM Notes) and webmail systems (such as Outlook.com, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail) use their own non-standard protocols to access mail box accounts on their own mail servers, all use SMTP when sending or receiving email from outside their own systems.

Mail Transfer Protocol

The Mail Transfer Protocol (MTP) is an obsolete network protocol used to reliably transfer mail. Request for Comments (RFC) 780, which defined this protocol, allocated Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) port 57 for MTP. This port is no longer officially allocated for this service by IANA.

Replacement

The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), defined in RFC 788 has replaced the Mail Transfer Protocol.

See also

References

List of file transfer protocols

A list of notable file transfer protocols:

List of file transfer protocols

Primarily used with TCP/IP

Primarily used with UDP

Primarily used with direct modem connections