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isp dns records - 11.Dec.2003 5:22:00 PM

slam31

Posts: 14
Joined: 11.Dec.2003
From: uk
Status: offline

we currently have our outgoing mail going through our isp on a broadband link. we also have a website hosted by another company. currently this company routes our e-mails which we download to a single machine using outlook express!. we have just introduced an exchange 2k server and the host company say they will change their dns records to point to our exchange machines ip address. do we have to do anything else on our machine to receive them? (i.e "pull" them down) or are they just forwarded on to us by their dns records?

Post #: 1

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RE: isp dns records - 11.Dec.2003 6:59:00 PM

Henrik Walther

Posts: 6827
Joined: 21.Nov.2002
From: Copenhagen, Denmark
Status: offline

That depends...

Does your AD domain got the same name as your internet domain ? If not you would need to add your SMTP domain in the Default Policy under Recipient Policies in ESM (Exchange System Manager).

Have you configured your AD's DNS settings so that any query not resolved internally will be forwarded to external DNS servers (splitbrain DNS) ?

Note:
You should also mailbox enable any existing AD accounts.

(in reply to slam31)

Post #: 2

RE: isp dns records - 15.Dec.2003 10:10:00 AM

slam31

Posts: 14
Joined: 11.Dec.2003
From: uk
Status: offline

cheers henrik,
checked these things out and all are set correctly (now!) however still not getting mail from the outside world in. we can send internally ok and can send out ok. we are a bit unsure as to whether the company routing our mail have in fact changed their dns records as promised (will be contacting them shortly) however we spent a whole sunday doing lots of different checks. we did the following as suggested by Johan Sandqvist in another posting and all came out working ok ( we did these tests against our smtp domain:-
Try to connect to your Exchange server with telnet. This is the best way to check connectivity problems. Try to telnet both from within your network as well as from an outside connection. If you need help drop me a note on johan.sandqvist@home.se or send a private message in this forum.

To telnet to your exchange server do this:

1) telnet mail.yourdomain.com smtp (substituting mail.yourdomain.com for your server's real name)

2) the response should be something like this (Exchange 2000 with SP2):
220 mail.yourdomain.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 5.0.2195.4905 ready at Tue, 30 Jul 2002 01:15:18 +0200

3) if you receive this from external networks your basic connectivity is OK (=your server can be reached). No response equals basic tcp/ip problems (e.g. wrong ip address, firewall blocking, routing problems etc).

4) issue the commands:
helo [yourcomputername] (without brackets)
mail from: someone@somedomain.com

5) the respone should be 250 Sender ok (or at least just the 250 response. If you get "454 5.7.3 Client was not authenticated.Connection closed by foreign host." you have no anonymous access enabled on your server!

6) if you get 250, then try to issue:
rcpt to: validuser@yourdomain.com

7) you should get 250 again. If you get something like "relay not allowed" then your recipient policy is wrong!

8) issue the command "data" followed by some test message and finally <crlf>.<crlf> (<crlf> simple means "press enter", so to end the data block press enter, then . and then enter again.

9) if you get something like:
250 2.6.0 <SERVER2yezZAiLxhm8i00000050@mail.yourdomain.com> Queued mail for delivery
then things look alright. Check that the user validuser@yourdomain.com received the testmessage

10) if you got the 250 "queued for delivery" and the message was NOT delivered the it is probably an internal Exchange error. Start to go through the Exchange server logs.

We've also done some tests from www.dnsreport.com and the results showed our mx and a records pointing to the company routing our mail,s dns servers. should this be showing our own server also?
any thoughts?
cheers
slam31

(in reply to slam31)

Post #: 3

RE: isp dns records - 15.Dec.2003 11:53:00 AM

Henrik Walther

Posts: 6827
Joined: 21.Nov.2002
From: Copenhagen, Denmark
Status: offline

Slam31,

What is your domain name, then I will examine for any potential errors...?

(in reply to slam31)

Post #: 4

RE: isp dns records - 15.Dec.2003 1:03:00 PM

slam31

Posts: 14
Joined: 11.Dec.2003
From: uk
Status: offline

one other thing,
should we have in our default recipients policy an smtp entry for our local smtp domain AND one for our registered internet domain name? is this what you meant when you said to add our smtp domain to our default recip policy?
it seems that since we have done that our router seems to be intermittently crashing and both the router and the e2k server need re- starting to fix it!?!?

(in reply to slam31)

Post #: 5

RE: isp dns records - 15.Dec.2003 1:32:00 PM

koggen

Posts: 980
Joined: 31.Oct.2001
From: G�teborg - Sweden
Status: offline

Yes, that's right. You need both domains as recipient policies, otherwise Exchange won't accept inbound email. Also make sure that you use the Recipient Update Service to create valid email addresses, or manually assign them, for the registered internet domain.

[ December 15, 2003, 01:45 PM: Message edited by: Johan Sandqvist ]

(in reply to slam31)

Post #: 6

RE: isp dns records - 15.Dec.2003 2:24:00 PM

slam31

Posts: 14
Joined: 11.Dec.2003
From: uk
Status: offline

Henrik
our internet domain is www.phoenixent.org.uk which is hosted by quad.co.uk. Hope this helps and thankyou for your assistance.

(in reply to slam31)

Post #: 7

RE: isp dns records - 15.Dec.2003 3:16:00 PM

Henrik Walther

Posts: 6827
Joined: 21.Nov.2002
From: Copenhagen, Denmark
Status: offline

slam31,

Both smtp.quad.co.uk and smtp1.quad.co.uk answers on port 25 and receives mail, are those SMTP gateways in front of your Exchange server ?

(in reply to slam31)

Post #: 8

RE: isp dns records - 15.Dec.2003 4:16:00 PM

slam31

Posts: 14
Joined: 11.Dec.2003
From: uk
Status: offline

yes, they are the company that currently route our mail to pop3 and are supposed to be changing their dns records to start sending the mail on to our e2k server instead (although they did say they would have it going to both for a while until we were sure we had got the e2k server working correctly. At which point they would take it off pop3).
So by acting as an smtp gateway are they just re-directing our mail to our e2k server via our public ip address through their dns records?

(in reply to slam31)

Post #: 9

RE: isp dns records - 15.Dec.2003 4:53:00 PM

slam31

Posts: 14
Joined: 11.Dec.2003
From: uk
Status: offline

IT IS NOW WORKING!
after all that it came down to what we suspected in the first place and quad had put the wrong ip address in for our public ip! all is working fine now.
thanks for all your help and we have learnt loads more about exchange whilst troubleshooting it.
I am sure we will be back to this great site now we have found it! thanks again for all your help

(in reply to slam31)

Post #: 10

RE: isp dns records - 15.Dec.2003 6:45:00 PM