SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. The standard e-mail protocol on the Internet. SMTP was originally designed for text, but MIME and other encoding methods enable program and multimedia files to be attached to e-mail messages.

SMTP servers route SMTP messages throughout the Internet to a mail server, such as POP3 or IMAP4, which provides a message store for incoming mail.

A protocol used to transfer electronic mail between computers. It is specified in RFC 821, with extensions specified in many other RFCs. It is a server to server protocol, so other protocols are used to access the messages. See also: Electronic Mail, Post Office Protocol, RFC 822.