Message Transfer Agent

messaging (MTA, Mail Transport Agent) The program

responsible for delivering e-mail messages. Upon receiving

a message from a Mail User Agent or another MTA it stores it

temporarily locally and analyses the recipients and either

delivers it (local addressee) or forwards it to another MTA

(routing). In either case it may edit and/or add to the

message headers.

The most widely used MTA for Unix is sendmail, which

communicates using SMTP.

[Other OSes?]

(1997-02-28)