Postal Letter

When someone send you an e-mail, where does it reside while it waits for you e-mail client to pick it up?

I don't get it but where it resides? I don't know what it means but I guess it's inbox? if it's wrong then what is it? 10 points provided if you know the answer, thank you!

Public Comments

1. It goes to your mail providers server. That is where it waits and resides. Dane
2. The messages reside on an email server, your Outlook is just a POP3 client that connects to the mail server to download the mail. http://communication.howstuffworks.com/email.htm Larry Dougherty Hosting.com Server Engineer
3. When you send a message, it goes to your outbox. From there it talked to your SMTP server to send the message. It gets sent to the SMTP server and then it uses DNS to determine where it needs to be sent to. It then sends it to that SMTP server and from there it looks to see what sever it needs to send it to. It then resides on that server until it is picked up by the recipients email client. There can be more hops than this, but it should give you the idea.
4. you're email host's pop3 server
5. It sits on somebody's email sever (example yahoo) until you log into your email to view it. It don't sit on your pc & wait for you to turn it on.
6. Your email will reside in the IMAP or POP3 server of your recipient's email client. Let's say you use yahoo email. When you sent email out, it goes through yahoo's SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) server, that that server delivers it to the recipient's POP3 or IMAP server (post office protocol version 3 and internet message access protocol). [You]----[SMTP]----*internet*---- ---[IMAP/POP3]---[recipient] Email stays in the POP3 server until the recipient opens and downloads it to their computer. IMAP emails stay on the IMAP server.