SMTP Dispute !!

Question

Hello fiends,
Recently, I made one SMTP server (in Java) and showed it to my college teacher. He said my server is wrong.
Teacher said
1) There is nothing called SMTP receiver, that is, SMTP can only send emails and can never accept emails. Only POP3 or IMAP can accept emails from other SMTP servers.
2) I told him that my SMTP receiver will put the email in the user mail boxes directly and after that user can use POP3 client to fetch the emails from there. He says I am wrong, according to him SMTP can neither accept an email nor it can put it in users mail box directly.
After getting some lectures from him, I have still not changed my mind.
I think
1) There is SMTP sender that sends email to destination SMTP receiver.
2) SMTP receiver then puts the received email in a common storage, from there the distributing agent tranfers the mail to user mail boxes or the receiver can directly put the mail in the user mail box.
I even told him that I have read RFC 821 and its given in it, but he doesn't know anything about RFC or anything about its existence. He feels my basics are not clear !!
This is getting very serious now, he has insulted me in front of all and my project has not received any attention.
I just want to know whose statements are wrong. Please tell me if I am making any mistakes.
You people have always helped me.
Thanks

Answer 1

It could be that you are discussing different things?
A mail client (e.g outlook) uses POP3/IMAP to get mailes from the mail server, but uses SMTP to send mails. A client doesn't need to be connected using e.g. POP3 and SMTP to the same server. It can look like this.
--------  sending mail SMTP   -------------------      SMTP
|      |--------------------> |  SMTP server (1) | -------------------------
|      |                      -------------------                           |
|Client|                                                                    V
|      | Receiving mail POP3  ------------------------     SMTP            -------------------
|      |<-------------------- | POP3/SMTP server (2) | <------------------ | SMTP server (3) |
(1) Does not accept mail, only used to send.
(2) Does only accept mail, never used to send.
(3) Another company SMTP server, which is used to both send/receive mail.Could it be that your teacher is talking about this scenario?
/Kaj