Chapter 4. Net

In the previous chapters, you’ve looked extensively at HTTP and HTML—two of the most fundamental standards behind the Internet. The major protocols behind email (POP3, SMTP, IMAP, MIME) are all supported by JavaMail (http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/). This leaves a tremendous number of other protocols, however.

The Jakarta Commons Net package covers a huge number of the other standard Internet protocols, including Finger, Whois, TFTP, Telnet, FTP, NNTP, and some miscellaneous protocols such as Time, Echo, and BSD R. POP3 and SMTP are also supported, but JavaMail (http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/) provides a more mainstream, higher-level wrapper for these protocols.