22-04-2010, 12:06 AM
SMS Based PUSH Email Server
Comparison with traditional e-mail
Traditional e-mail access over network connections was and still is "pull" based (Post Office Protocol (POP3) is a popular example of a pull based mail delivery protocol.): at login and later in intervals, the Mail User Agent (e-mail reader) polls the Mail Delivery Agent (server) to see if there is new mail, and if so downloads it to a mailbox in the user's home directory. However, mail has always been pushed from the origin to the final Mail Delivery Agent. Extending this push to the last delivery step is what distinguishes push e-mail from traditional e-mail systems.
The reason that pull is the usual method for the last stage of mail delivery is that, while the server Mail Delivery Agent would normally be permanently connected to the network, it does not necessarily know how to locate the client Mail User Agent, which is likely to not only be connected only occasionally, but also to change network address quite often. For example, a user with a laptop on a WiFi connection may be assigned different addresses from the network DHCP server every once in a while and have no persistent network name, and when new mail arrives to the mail server, it does not know what address the client is currently assigned.
The Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) provides support for polling and notifications. When a client receives a notification from a server, the client may choose to fetch the new data from the server. This makes retrieval of new messages more flexible than a purely-push system, because the client can choose whether to download new message data.
What is SMS Based Push Mail Service?
Although push e-mail had existed in wired-based systems for many years, one of the first uses of the system with a portable, "always on" wireless device outside of Asia was the BlackBerry service from Research In Motion. In Japan, "push e-mail" has been standard in cell phones since the year 2000.
But affording a Blackberry is not feasible to many of the internet users.
The proposed system is a web based project that has mainly two modules.
1. An Email Client with an user interface. Through this module the subscriber can store his account details that has POP or IMAP access and his mobile number in which he would like to receive mails as SMS. The user can also set his preferred mails that need to be pushed to his mobile device. Using the account information the server will start receiving the emails for the particular client. Once a mail is received the server will check validate the mail with the user preference. Once it passed the validation the mail message will be transferred to second module.
2. SMS Engine. The SMS engine will extract the mail body and sender from the mail message and will SMS it to the user using an SMS gateway.
A nominal amount per SMS can be charged to the subscriber to meet the recurring cost of this project. Other wise text ads can be attached to the message and the recurring cost can be found through such advertisement.
This project can be developed in J2EE, PHP or .NET
