Telnet – SMTP Commands

In order to access your mailbox you will need 3 things:

• An active internet connection (an embarrasing stage to miss sometimes!)
• The address of a mail server capable of relaying for you – usually provided by your dialup provider (e.g. mail.domain.ext)
• A valid email address (e.g. mail@domain.ext)

The first thing to do is to open a connection from your computer to your mail server.
telnet mail.domain.ext 25
You should receive a reply like:

You will then need to delcare where you are sending the email from:

HELO local.domain.name – dont worry too much about your local domain name although you really should use your exact fully qualified domain name as seen by the outside world the mail server has no choice but to take your word for it as of RFC822-RFC1123.
This should give you:
250 mail.domain.ext Hello local.domain.name [loc.al.i.p], pleased to meet you?

Now give your email address:

MAIL FROM: mail@domain.ext

Should yeild:  250 2.1.0 mail@domain.ext... Sender ok

If it doesn’t please see? possible problems.Now give the recipients address:
RCPT TO: mail@otherdomain.ext
Should yeild:  250 2.1.0 mail@otherdomain.ext... Recipient ok If it doesn’t please see possible problems.To start composing the message issue the command

DATA?

If you want a subject for your email type Subject:-type subject here- then press enter twice (these are needed to conform to RFC 882)

You may now proceed to type the body of your message (e.g. hello mail@otherdomain.ext from mail@domain.ext)

To tell the mail server that you have completed the message enter a single “.” on a line on it’s own.
The mail server should reply with:

 250 2.0.0 ???????? Message accepted for delivery?

You can close the connection by issuing the QUIT command.
The mailserver should reply with something like:

221 2.0.0 mail.domain.ext closing connection Connection closed by foreign host.