Communicating on the Internet

Every day millions of people from around the world use the Internet to communicate.An email client can be either software or hardware. Microsoft outlook and Eudora are both software designed solely for the purpose of handling email. Gmail and hotmail are both web-based clients provided by a server. The email client also helps communicate with the email server and helps tell where the email is suppose to go. Once you tell where the email is suppose to go it can do the rest for you.
After you send the email the first step it does is your email client connects to a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server for your email domain. The email client says who the email is from and who it is going to. The SMTP server then looks at the domain of the address that the email is being sent to and queries a Domain Name System (DNS) server to ask for the IP address of the domain in question. Once it has done that it then connects to that domain and passes the message along to its SMTP server. POP3 and IMAP are the two types of incoming mail servers. 
Instant messaging is an alternate to chat rooms, now you can do a lot more than just chatting. With IM, you can send and receive files, create chat rooms, and even send messages to and from a cell phone. Before you can instant message you have to download the client server. Once you connect to the server you can then sign up or log in to your account.  Because your user client has all the information it needs to send messages directly to your contacts’ clients, the server doesn’t need to be involved.