Product Description

Strengthen your knowledge of the basic concepts and technical details necessary to develop, implement, or debug e-mail software with this practical new reference. Authored by a recognized expert in creating and developing successful Internet e-mail servers, the book explains the underlying technology and describes the key protocols and extensions associated with Internet e-mail, including SMTP, POP3, IMAP, MIME, DSN, and more.

Network administrators, computer specialists, software developers... anyone charged with assessing, developing, or managing Internet e-mail systems will value this clear, comprehensive guide. It helps you build a sound understanding of e-mail architecture, message flow, and tracing protocols, and includes real-world examples of message exchanges with program code that you can refer to when developing or debugging your own systems. You also gain valuable insight into various security topics, including public and secret key encryption, digital signatures, and key management. What's more, each chapter begins with a unique, detailed definition list to help speed your understanding of technical terms and acronyms.

CD-ROM Included! Valuable software contains a listing of related Internet RFCs, as well as RSA PKCS documents, Eudora 3.0 freeware client, and the free user version of Software.com Post.Office Server for Windows NT 3.0.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1730343 in Books
• Published on: 1998-07-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 488 pages

About the Author
Lawrence Hughes has more than 20 years of experience in the computer industry and is currently a regional consulting engineer for Inacom Information Systems, Atlanta, Georgia. He received his B.S. in Mathematics from Florida State University.

Customer Reviews

Windows NT specific, poorly written, and not comprehensive
My initial complaint, which I realized within the first chapter, is that the author is *extremely* biased towards WinNT, not simply ignoring other platforms, but actually taking several pages to explain why they should all be ignored. He claims that Apple doesn't let programmers write compatible software and will sue those who try, and that the single newline character used on UNIX systems is an anachronism from when computers didn't have enough memory for the more correct CR LF sequence. (The first of which is clearly absurd and the second of which is directly contradictory to the universally accepted truth that CRLF is a holdover from teletype days.) This seems very strange since internet email is almost by definition a cross-platform (or even UNIX-specific) venture; and the newline comment is extremely worrying since this is a major issue in email which the author completely ignores.

Even for NT-specific programming this book doesn't seem useful. The author includes incredibly rudimentary material (including a section on how binary works and what bits are) yet jumps straight to rather sophisticated constructs with no explanation of those construts at all: I fear neither novice users nor experienced programmers would like this book.

The section on domain names consists of nothing more than instructions on configuring one specific WinNT DNS server. The protocol explanations include ridiculous side notes ("now is the time to clear your input buffers") which are clearly specific to the one product the authors claims to have written, yet not a single line of code appears in the book.

This book could at best have a been a decent compilation of RFC's, but the protocols are not detailed completely and there are multiple blatant errors. Any time saved by using this book instead of scrounging the internet will be lost ten times over in debugging time.

This is the first book I've ever returned to Amazon, and is the last one I will ever buy from this publisher.

Superb book. Highly recommend it.
I had to implement a POP-3 mail client and this book saved my life.

The material in the book is overly oriented towards NT and you have to take with a grain of salt its NT bias. Its technical content however is superb. The mail protocols it describes work on UNIX without change. The one thing you have to watch out for is the different circumstances under which NT and UNIX produce "\r".

The well organized CD is in and of itself worth the price of the book. The book gave me a tutorial which explained what I needed to do. The CD gave me the details.

I am an experienced programmer and I'm not sure this book will help beginners though for beginners it has very useful glossaries.

well written, thorough, but with Windows NT bias
Hughes has written an excellent book. He explains the protocols and standards extremely well. Which is the diamond of this book. (i.e. why you should buy it.) But the implementation illustrations are mostly Windows NT with a mention of a UNIX counter part. He even explains how to install Microsoft DNS and Proxy. The NT explanation is like a double edged sword. If you know *NIX, all you will need is the P+S. Hughes points out how M$ has gone of the track of the standards and screwed up. (like how Exchange is a single file message store mail server incompatible with POP3 and SNMP) The cd-rom has the RFC documents created by the IETF. If you are looking for a book that explains the ins and outs of Internet e-mail without missing a pin-drop, this is the book for you. All the best!