Windows Mail Server

hi i am fairly new to the system admin world i was wondering if someone can explain to me the difference between POP, SMTP, etc. and which one is best for me. all i want to do is be able to create emails. ex. i own www.whatever.com i want to be able to create an email vinny@whatever.com be able to forward it to where ever or use it in Outlook. any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

It's not the case of which one is best - they are used for different tasks. SMTP is used to accept mail from remote servers for delivery to local (or remote) recipients. People will try and deliver mail to the mail server at www.whatever.com via SMTP.

Also, when your mail client (e.g. Outlook) wants to send mail to other people, it will send them to a mail server via SMTP for delivery.

Once the mail has arrived and is stored on the server, you can download it using the POP3 protocol.

so i guess i would want a POP3 b/c then the peoples ISP handle the SMTP part correct?

You still need an SMTP server to accept incoming mail. POP3 is only used by you (in this case) to pick up your mail once it has arrived. It will arrive via SMTP.

ok so i have Win2k Server any suggestions on which ones i should get, i had IPSwitch Imail and did not like it it was very complicated

I'm no expert on WINDOWS mail servers, but I have heard that ArGoSoft is pretty good. Try that.

Chris

Argosoft has a free mail server but its limited to 5MB emails. Windows has its own SMTP server you can install if its not already. The only thing you are going to be missing is POP3 which something like Exchange provides and uses the windows SMTP, it also adds IMAPI, X.400, various protocols for different applications. It also have OWA (Outlook Web Access) which fairly nice.

Exchange is expensive however.