If you have worked with email services for even a short time then POP, SMTP and IMAP are all acronyms that you see on a regular basis. Of course like any other technology, email is loaded with other acronyms that can easily cause bewilderment to fall across the gaze of those unfamiliar with the terms.

Acronymic jargon is used, and almost overused, in the IT field everywhere you turn. In discussions with peers, in training and especially in the various forums and blogs acronyms are used for the sake of convenience and also to make ourselves look smarter. However as one scholar once said, fluency in jargon does not equal proficiency.

But acronyms and jargon exist, and if we want to do our jobs effectively then there are some terms we need to be familiar with.

For those of you who find yourself having to fire up Google every time you come across an unfamiliar acronym, I have compiled a list of ten acronyms common to email technology so next time you’re trolling the support forums for an answer to a perplexing problem you will know exactly what is being said.

DNSBL – Domain Name Service Block List (Blacklist or Blackhole List).  This is either a zone file or live DNS zone that contains IP addresses of known spammers. When queried, an ISP or other spam-blocking software can block mail sent from addresses on these lists from reaching the inboxes of their users.

ESMTP – Enhanced Simple Mail Transfer (or Transport) Protocol. This protocol enhances the capability to extend existing SMTP commands and allows sizes greater than 512 characters in ‘MAIL FROM’ and “RCPT TO’.

FQDN – Fully Qualified Domain Name. Also known as the absolute domain name this specifies its exact location in the tree hierarchy of the Domain Name System (DNS). It specifies all domain levels, including the top-level domain and the root domain.

MIME – Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. This extends the formatting of email messages to support:

• Text in character sets other than ASCII
• Non-text attachments
• Message bodies with multiple parts
• Header information in non-ASCII character sets

MTA – Mail (or Message) Transfer Agents. An MTA is software that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another using both the sending (client) and receiving (server) portions of SMTP.

MUA – Mail User Agent. This is just another name for email client software. Outlook, Gmail, Thunderbird, etc. are all MUAs.

MX Record – Mail Exchanger Record. This tells other mail servers which mail server in the domain is the one responsible for receiving emails.

NDR – Non Delivery Report (also known as Non Delivery Notification or failed Delivery Status Notification). This is the automated notification that informs the sender of an email message that their message has bounced.

ODMR – On-Demand Mail Relay. This SMTP extension allows email to be relayed after the sender has been authenticated.

PGP – Pretty Good Privacy. This is a program that encrypts and decrypts data, and provides authentication for data communications. Email messages commonly use this to help protect the privacy of sensitive or confidential information.

The Bonus Acronym

When reading up about email protocols, you may come across the acronym RFC. The RFC stands for Request for Comments. The RFC is a document that contains the discussion and research notes for the development of new Internet and data communications protocols. When you see RFC it is followed by a unique number that was assigned to it by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

So feel free to toss these terms around the next time you are seeking help, or offering advice. When you boss walks by you and some colleagues sitting by the water cooler, make sure to comment on how you feared the latest email marketing campaign would get your FQDN flagged by the DNSBL. To be proactive, you made sure to check that there have been a minimal number of NDRs so you know that your mail services have not been affected. Even still, you and your team are going to make sure that all employees know how to effectively use their MUAs so that the mail you send out isn’t blocked by any other mail servers.

NB – Just in case you were wondering, the acronyms from the introduction are short for:

• Post Office Protocol (POP)
• Simple Mail Transfer/Transport Protocol (SMTP)
• Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP)