How Email Travels From Sender to Inbox

Follow an email from a sender's device through domain lookups, mail servers and the recipient's inbox. Shared standards coordinate the journey, while filtering and delivery choices vary among providers. Inside this episode: - Two addresses in one message - Submission is the first handoff - DNS points toward the mail server - Server to server - Why email can wait Sources include RFC 5321, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, RFC 5321, Address Resolution and Mail Handling, and RFC 5598, Internet Mail Architecture. This episode is a researched narrative summary. Historical records may be incomplete, translated differently, or interpreted differently by scholars. We distinguish documented facts, estimates, disputed interpretations, and later stories where material. Corrections are logged and incorporated into future editions. Follow The Internet in Practice for more researched stories about the infrastructure of the internet.