Hello leah0366-ga!
The message you are referring to, is found in the header information
for an e-mail sent by a Hotmail webmail user, through the Hotmail web
interface. It is typically found on a line similar to the following:
"Received from: ###.###.###.### by sea1fd.sea1.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP"
This line is part of the header information attached to an e-mail. You
can learn more about e-mail headers at this excellent online resource
here:
http://www.stopspam.org/email/headers.html
Now, to explain your specific request above...
Hotmail (which as you undoubtedly know is owned by Microsoft as part
of their Microsoft Network (MSN)) has many e-mail servers in order to
accommodate the over 110 million Hotmail users worldwide (see:
http://www.searchengineposition.com/info/Articles/ALookAtMSN.asp ).
Some servers fulfill the role of storing e-mail, others the role of
sending or receiving e-mail.
In order to differentiate between servers, the servers are arranged in
groups for ease of management. The specific machine you are interested
in is named 'sea1fd', and is part of a group that MSN has named
'sea1'. This is part of the 'hotmail' group within the family of
servers that form 'msn.com'.
The 'with HTTP' part tells you that the person who sent the message
used the Hotmail web interface to compose and send the message. Some
people use Outlook Express to interact with their Hotmail accounts.
Messages from these folks would not show the 'with HTTP' part, they
would show 'with DAV'.
The IP address that precedes the server name is the IP address of the
PC where the message was composed. In this case, it is the machine
running the web browser that was used to access the Hotmail interface.
Please note that this is the external, or public IP address for that
machine. If the machine is part of a home network, where a single
public IP address is shared (using a router) between multiple
machines, then you would need to look for other clues in the header to
be able to trace the message to a specific PC.
I hope that this helps!
aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher |
Request for Answer Clarification by
leah0366-ga
on
25 Feb 2004 11:59 PST
Does "by sea1fd.sea1." in the header refer to a server in a country
other than the United States? If yes...what part of the world?
|
Clarification of Answer by
aht-ga
on
25 Feb 2004 12:33 PST
Hi leah0366-ga:
MSN Hotmail's server farm is located in the United States. The
facility is in MSN's data center located in San Jose, California.
Here's is an entry from a MS employee's blog talking about this:
http://www.redyawning.com/blog.aspx?userid=1&blogid=567
If you are trying to figure out where a specific user who sent you an
e-mail might be located, you would be better off tracking down where
(in the world) the 'owner' of the IP address' subnet is. This will
only be possible if the IP address is a public IP address of course,
but Hotmail tends to be pretty good about capturing the public IP
address.
If indeed you are looking to track down the location, you can post a
new question along the lines of "Is it possible to determine where in
the world the following IP address is located, and if so, please tell
me where.", and provide the first three octets of the IP address: ex.
200.200.123.xxx
Hope this helps!
aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher
|
Clarification of Answer by
aht-ga
on
26 Feb 2004 08:21 PST
leah-ga:
I am sorry that you are not fully satisfied with the Answer I provided
you. However, I would ask you to look at your Question and
Clarification from my perspective, to understand the Answer I have
given you.
In your question, you asked:
"What does "by sea1fd.sea1.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP".. mean? It
follows some IP numbers."
My Answer fully describes to you what the meaning of the term in
quotes means. Nowhere in your question do you ask about a location.
You then followed up my Answer with a Request for Clarification asking:
"Does "by sea1fd.sea1." in the header refer to a server in a country
other than the United States? If yes...what part of the world?"
My reply pointed you towards a resource that confirms that the Hotmail
email servers are located in San Jose, California, USA.
I then suggested that, if you are actually looking for information
about something completely different from the location of Hotmail's
e-mail servers, ie. the physical location of the PC on which the email
you received was actually written on, that you should consider posting
a new question. The reason for this is because tracking down an IP
address is not a simple task, and therefore is best handled by posting
a new question with an appropriate list price.
I hope that you can appreciate our exchange from my perspective, as I
feel that given the information you provided me in your Question and
your Request for Clarification, I have completely Answered your
Question.
Best regards,
aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
leah0366-ga
on
26 Feb 2004 09:11 PST
Tried to put this under "Comments"...but the link was not successful....
After reviewing my question and the answer supplied, I believe I was
wrong with scoring the researcher at "2"... should have been a "4"....
The researcher aht-ga gave me the information I asked for.
|
Clarification of Answer by
aht-ga
on
26 Feb 2004 09:25 PST
leah0366-ga:
Thank you for the follow-up! The rating cannot be changed after it has
been set; my main concern was to ensure that you understood why my
Answer and Clarification were phrased the way they were. I noticed
that my fellow Researcher, clouseau-ga, was able to help you with the
IP address location question, so hopefully you now have all of the
information you need!
Regards,
aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher
|
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