(1) A similar-sounding acronym. See
SNMP.
(2) (
Simple
Mail
Transfer
Protocol) The standard email protocol on the Internet and part of the TCP/IP protocol suite. SMTP defines the format of an email message and the message transfer agent (MTA), which is a mail server that forwards the mail. The SMTP server temporarily stores the messages until they can be relayed to another server or to a message store that uses the POP3 or IMAP4 access protocol to communicate with the user's email program.
Originally Only ASCII Text
SMTP was originally designed for only plain text, but MIME and other encoding methods enable executable programs and multimedia files to be attached to and transported with the email message. See
TCP/IP,
POP3,
IMAP4,
MIME and
messaging system.