Email

  Emails transmit with the velocity of light. In addition, they can never be lost, compared with snail mails. You may think so.

  An email has to face so many challenges, in order to enter the other mailboxes. Now, you can understand why so many emails would be lost and delayed.
   
  Router: Thousands of routers exist on the Internet. They are crossroads, which guide your email to the correct country, state, city, district, network and server. Besides, it has been discarding overfull data, in order to maintain the smooth of the Internet. Your email would be lost during this process.

  Switch: Actually, the Internet consists of various small networks. Switches guarantee the transmission quality through different networks.

  Cache: Your email will be stay in the cache to queue, if too many emails enter the local network at the same time. Besides, it will try three or four times if it fails. The time span can be three hours. It means that your email has to wait over twelve hours to enter if it tries for four times.

  Gateway: It is used to solve the format problem of different data, such as emails and database files.

  Firewall: It is used to prevent harmful or suspicious data. Besides, it can prevent some kinds of attacks and thefts.

  Spam Filter: It can prevent spam. However, it can easily mistake correct emails as spam, because of the simple judging programs. For example, your email, which is too long, or include strange images, can be assumed as spam.

  Database: Your email will be stored in the database.

  Mailbox: It will display your email correctly, according to the format, style, words and images. Besides, some powerful mailboxes can scan virus, search emails, and enhance the download speed of attachments.

  Most of the time, your email just transmits through cheap copper lines, which always have signal problems. In addition, it has to pass different machines on the Internet. Every time your email has to wait. It can never be transmit with the velocity of light as your imagine.

  It is quite normal that your email is lost. You may think that they are stolen by hackers. In fact, every time your email enters a machine, your email has the risk of lost. These machines are also cheap. They will give up your email at once when facing static electricity, dust, power failure or earthquakes. That is the reason your email may disappear from the earth.

  In order to get a better result, you should use the same mailboxes, such as Yahoo! Mail to Yahoo! Mail, MSN to MSN, and Gmail to Gmail. Your email does not have to pass routers, gateways or other extra networks or machines. It just has to turn around and then enter the mailbox. If not, it could increase the risks of loss. Similarly, you should send more than one email if you send to a small company, which email system may not be stable enough.

  In fact, not every one is good at typing. Replying more than eight emails within one day can be very annoying even though he or she is good at typing. Many people prefer telephone to email. The terrible problem of email is that it is one-way. Sometimes, you can finish your work within thirty seconds through a telephone, but you have to finish it in three days through emails.

  Email can be lost as easy as letter. Nowadays, all the email systems are low enough. Many people think that hackers steal them. In fact, hackers will not do it even they have the technology to steal emails. They have to find space to receive them first. Note that thousands of emails are transmitted each second. Their mailboxes will collapse within one minute if hackers store the emails in their mailboxes. Their hard disks will be broken within two minutes if hackers store the emails in their own computers harddisks. Hackers are not stupid. 
  
  Hackers can listen to the signals on the Internet. It means that they can directly see your emails, if they are not encrypted strongly. This is just the academic theory. Mostly, you do not have to worry at all. It seldom happens. Most emails are spam. They have been generating a great amount of noises. Hackers can read the contents of your emails with great difficulty. This is the sole advantage of spam.