Email

Early time-sharing systems

Several users concurrently using the same computer at same time or different times
Mail used for users to communicate
Mail sent ONLY to users that could access that same computer
Even more popular with Unix Systems in the 1970's
Mail address was the username. Ex. mail pfranca
Essentially you create a text file that is placed in a "mail" folder belonging to the other user; each user has his/her own folder

ArpaNet (precursor of Internet)

Several large computers interconnected; each could have its own mail system
Users could only send mail to other users capable of accessing the same computer
Bright idea: allow mail to be sent to one of the other computers in the network.
Mail pfranca@ucsc would mean: send this mail to the computer "ucsc" and ask this computer to place this mail on the folder for user "pfranca".
Electronic mail became popular with research community, because they were the only ones able to access such computers.

Online Services (AOL, Prodigy, etc.)

Internet

Mail Servers: computers that are able to receive and process mail
Mail Servers have a mailbox for each user that holds mail in that particular server. (Ex. ucsc.edu; google.com; yahoo.com, etc.)
Most likely users do not log on to the mail server to see their mail. They use a Web Mail application or an E-mail Client
- Web Mail - use your computer to access a remote web site where you can see and work with your mail.
  - Web Mail is available in any computer, as long as you can access the Internet.
- E-mail Client - use a software in your computer that will communicate with a specific mail server (E.g. Outlook, Eudora):
  - Download your mail from the server to your computer;
  - Maintain all your mail in your computer;
  - Upload outgoing mail to the mail server for delivery.

Issues with E-mail