The communication between the sender and receiver is intended to be an alternating dialogue, controlled by the sender. As such, the sender issues a command and the receiver responds with a reply. The sender must wait for this response before sending further commands.
One important reply is the connection greeting. Normally, a receiver will send a 220 "Service ready" reply when the connection is completed. The sender should wait for this greeting message before sending any commands.
For example,
220 <SP> USC-ISIF.ARPA <SP> Service ready <CRLF>
The table below lists alternative success and failure replies for each command. These must be strictly adhered to; a receiver may substitute text in the replies, but the meaning and action implied by the code numbers and by the specific command reply sequence cannot be altered.
COMMAND-REPLY SEQUENCES
Each command is listed with its possible replies. The prefixes used before the possible replies are "P" for preliminary (not used in SMTP), "I" for intermediate, "S" for success, "F" for failure, and "E" for error. The 421 reply (service not available, closing transmission channel) may be given to any command if the SMTP-receiver knows it must shut down. This listing forms the basis for the State Diagrams in Section 4.4.
CONNECTION ESTABLISHMENT S: 220 F: 421 HELO S: 250 E: 500, 501, 504, 421 MAIL S: 250 F: 552, 451, 452 E: 500, 501, 421 RCPT S: 250, 251 F: 550, 551, 552, 553, 450, 451, 452 E: 500, 501, 503, 421 DATA I: 354 -> data -> S: 250 F: 552, 554, 451, 452 F: 451, 554 E: 500, 501, 503, 421 RSET S: 250 E: 500, 501, 504, 421 SEND S: 250 F: 552, 451, 452 E: 500, 501, 502, 421 SOML S: 250 F: 552, 451, 452 E: 500, 501, 502, 421 SAML S: 250 F: 552, 451, 452 E: 500, 501, 502, 421 VRFY S: 250, 251 F: 550, 551, 553 E: 500, 501, 502, 504, 421 EXPN S: 250 F: 550 E: 500, 501, 502, 504, 421 HELP S: 211, 214 E: 500, 501, 502, 504, 421 NOOP S: 250 E: 500, 421 QUIT S: 221 E: 500 TURN S: 250 F: 502 E: 500, 503