E-mail seems to be quite the complex animal, however it is the contrary. In order to begin to understand how e-mail works, you must first understand how to read an e-mail address.

Example: user@provider.com

This address has four parts:

• user: This is the recipient's user name. Most user names are a single word representing the person's first or last name, or a combination of the two names.
  
• @: This symbol (it's pronounced "at") separates the "who" part of the address (the part to the left of the @ sign) and the "where" part (the part to the right of the @ sign).
  
• provider: This is the Internet name (that is, the domain name) of the user's access provider. It tells you where the user's mailbox is located.
  
• com: The last part tells you what type of organization you're dealing with. Common suffixes are .com (commercial), .org (not for profit organization), .gov (government), and .net (network).