ITPEC FE Subject A October 2025 Question 26
Which of the following is an Internet standard that extends the format of email header fields to handle not only text messages but also audio and image files?
Explanation
MIME — Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions add header fields so an email can carry audio, images and other non-text data.
Plain Internet mail carries only 7-bit ASCII text. MIME adds header fields such as Content-Type and Content-Transfer-Encoding, encodes binary data (for example with Base64), and defines multipart messages so one mail can hold text and several attachments.
Answer (c)
Why not others:
- •(a) HTML — a markup language for web pages; an email body may be HTML, but it does not define email header fields.
- •(b) MHS — Message Handling System, the ITU-T X.400 messaging architecture, not the Internet mail extension standard.
- •(d) SMTP — the protocol that transfers mail between servers; it carries the message but does not define how audio or images are encoded in it.
Key rule: SMTP moves the mail, POP and IMAP retrieve it, and MIME defines how non-text content is packaged inside it.
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