Using Fetchmail to Retrieve Mail

SMTP is designed to work with systems that have a full-time connection to the Internet. What if you are on a dial-up account? What if you have another system store your email for you and then you log in to pick it up once in a while? (Most users who are not setting up servers will be in this situation.) In this case, you cannot easily receive email using SMTP, and you need to use a protocol, such as POP3 or IMAP, instead.

Note

Remember when we said that some mail clients can include some MTA functionality? You can configure Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express to use SMTP, and if you use a dial-up connection, they offer to start the connection and then use SMTP to send your mail, so a type of MTA functionality ...

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