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           Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP)

        Called SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol), it is also
referred to as "Unix Mail", or "Internet Mail" protocol. It is the
standard "protocol" for transporting electronic mail messages among
systems on the Internet, and has become probably the most common
transport for passing messages between heterogeneous computer systems
in the world today. First defined in the early 1980s, it has been
continually extended (but always in ways that were backwards compatible)
most recently adding multimedia support through a standard called
MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions).

        Utilizing a standards-based common mail protocol gives
organizations a tremendous advantage, especially when they might
have several existing electronic mail systems in use throughout the
organization already on different platforms. Rather than trying th
implement "mail gateways" between each pair of different mail
systems, it is much easier and more cost effective to look at
adopting a common protocol, where each disparate mail system only
needs to provide connectivity to the common backbone. The only
two worldwide mail protocols available are SMTP and X.400 (see
our accompanying article on the differences between X.400 and
SMTP). To save you some time, SMTP works with TCP/IP based
networks, and X.400 requires OSI based networks. You will find the
TCP/IP based networks are growing explosively, while OSI has
proven difficult and expensive to operate. A prime example here is
the Internet itself. The official electronic mail protocol of the Internet
is SMTP, so NetMail/3000 can automatically communicate with any
Internet compatible SMTP mail system. This means, among other
things, that it's a relatively simple matter to "plug your HP3000 into
the Internet" and become part of that incredible resource pool.

        With NetMail/3000 you don't need an add-on gateway;
SMTP capability is built right in. You can exchange electronic
information with any SMTP compatible mail system "out of the box".
As long as you have a network connection to the other system, you
can address mail to it. All the popular PC based electronic mail
systems offer SMTP gateways (cc:Mail, WordPerfect Office,
Microsoft Mail, Notework, and others). Unix based systems come
with Unix's "sendmail" program, which is SMTP compatible and talks
very nicely to NetMail/3000. Vax systems, IBM compatible
mainframes, and many, many others also offer SMTP gateways.

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