E-mail concepts
You depend on electronic mail (e-mail) as an essential business tool. The IBM® i operating system uses protocols, like Simple Message Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and Post Office Protocol (POP), to make your e-mail run smoothly and efficiently on the network.
Distribution methods
- Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
MIME is a standardized method for organizing divergent file formats. SMTP is limited to 7-bit ASCII text with a maximum line length of 1000 characters. MIME was developed to support more advanced file types, such as rich text, images, and audio or video files. MIME encodes files of binary type data to appear as simple SMTP data, using headers to distinguish different file types within the message, before sending the message with SMTP. The mail client then receives the message and decodes it to the proper file types by interpreting the MIME headers to read the file.
- S/MIME
Secure/MIME is a secure version of the MIME protocol that allows users to send encrypted and electronically signed mail messages, even if users have different mail programs.
- AnyMail/400 framework
All incoming mail from SMTP for local users (users with mail accounts on this system) is processed by the AnyMail/400 framework. The mail server framework is a mail distribution structure that allows the distribution of e-mail. The mail server framework calls exit programs or snap-ins to handle specific mail types.
- Systems Network Architecture distribution services (SNADS)
SNADS is an IBM asynchronous distribution service that defines a set of rules to receive, route, and send electronic mail in a network of systems. In this topic, SNADS refers to a user profile in which the Preferred address is set to User ID/Address. The preferred address tells the mail server framework what fields to use in the system distribution directory for the address.