Mini Case II Deals-R-Us Brokers (Part 1)
Fred Jones, a distant relative of yours and president of Deals-R-Us Brokers (DRUB), has come to you for advice. DRUB is a small brokerage house that enables its clients to buy and sell stocks over the Internet, as well as place traditional orders by phone or fax. DRUB has just decided to install a new e-mail package. One vendor is offering SMTP-based two-tier client-server architecture. The second vendor is offering Web-based e-mail architecture. Fred doesn’t understand either one but thinks the Web-based one should be better because, in his words, “the Web is the future.”
a. Briefly explain to Fred, in layperson’s terms, the differences between the two.
b. Outline the pros and cons of the two alternatives and make a recommendation to Fred about which is better.
How E-mail Works
The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the most commonly used e-mail standard simply because it is the e-mail standard used on the Internet. E-mail works similarly to how the Web works, but it is a bit more complex. SMTP e-mail is usually implemented as a two-tier thick client-server application, but not always.
Two-Tier Thick E-mail Architecture With two-tier thick client-server architecture, each client computer runs an application layer software package called a mail user agent, which is usually more commonly called an e-mail client (Figure 1). There are many common e-mail client software packages such as Eudora and Outlook. The user creates the e-mail message using one of these e-mail clients, which formats the message into an SMTP packet that includes information such as the sender’s address and the destination address. The user agent then sends the SMTP packet to a mail server that runs a special application layer software package called a mail transfer agent, which is more commonly called mail server software (see Figure 1).
This