Gmail SMTP Server Problems
Gmail is a webmail system owned by Google. SMTP is the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, which dictates how all email programs all over the world send emails. A problem with a Gmail SMTP server would be difficult to analyze because the SMTP system uses many different types of servers.
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Gmail
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Gmail is one of a range of webmail sites available to the general public for free. Early email systems involved downloading emails onto the PC where an email client managed your email activity. The client shows all current emails, presents an editor for the creation of new emails, manages connections to an email server and sends and receives new emails. These PC email systems still exist, but webmail systems like Gmail require no installation and make email available from any computer.
Clients and Servers
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Gmail and other webmail systems complicate the definition of client and server. A client is on your computer. The server is always at a remote location. Gmail is an email client on a server. The client program is the Web browser that fetches the Gmail screen from a Web server; however, that server-based page is a client for email. As far a SMTP is concerned, the Gmail screen is the mail client.
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Mail Servers
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If there's a reported error with an SMTP server, the error doesn't refer to the Gmail webmail page because that's officially the SMTP client. Gmail, like all other SMTP systems, uses a series of mail servers. The first is the Mail Submissions Agent, which has to find the underlying address of destination email addresses. Once the email address has been converted to an Internet address, the MSA sends the email to another server, called a Mail Exchange. The Mail Exchange then sends the email on to the recipient's Mail Exchange, which stores the email on a server called a Mail Delivery agent. The email stays on the MDA until the Mail User Agent (the mail client) sends a request for all new emails.
SMTP Server Problems
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If you receive an error message relating to the mail server, it's more likely to be related to an error encountered by the mail client when sending an email, in which case, the problem will be with the Mail Submissions Agent. If the mail client encounters an error when trying go to retrieve new emails, then the problem is with the Mail Delivery Agent. Both of these servers, plus the Gmail client are all under the control of Google. This is a large corporation and it's unlikely that its servers will ever be allowed to break. More likely the error is with a dropped connection. Sometimes large servers become overloaded. In both instances the only solution to a problem with the Gmail SMTP server is to wait and try the transaction again later.
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References
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