Mail Retrieval Agent

A Mail Retrieval Agent ( MRA ) fetches e-mails from a mail server , more precisely the Mail Delivery Agent (MDA), and saves them on the local computer . An MRA is integrated in most e-mail programs (Mail User Agent - MUA) and takes over the downloading of e- mails - e . B. using POP3 . But there are also other ways in which an MRA can access the mail. This also includes the protocol extensions of SMTP ATRN and ETRN .

If a MUA uses IMAP , it normally accesses the MDA directly and no MRA is technically involved. However, since many e-mail programs (MUA) also create a copy of the e-mails locally for offline mode, this MUA-IMAP software component is also usually referred to as an MRA.

Examples

Here are some examples of MRAs that are not MUAs:

• fetchmail
• getmail
• mpop
• retchmail
• fdm - a combined MRA and MDA ( Mail Delivery Agent )

literature

• David Wood: Programming Internet Email . 1st edition. O'Reilly Media, 1999, ISBN 978-1-56592-479-6 , pp. 3-4 .

Web links

• wiki.mutt.org (English)