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  Asked: Jun 16 2008   1:17 PM GMT
  Asked by: ITKE

I can send mail out but I can not receive e-mails windows 2003 sbs server with Exchange 2003


SBS 2003, Windows Server 2003, Exchange 2003, Windows Small Business Server 2003, ISP

Ive built a windows 2003 sbs server with Exchange 2003 that comes with the sbs software, I got the Isp to setup the mx and wwroot, My question is I can send mail out but I can not receive e-mails, the server is in our enviroment, Our ISP is only doing the hostinf for us?

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Last Answered: Jun 16 2008  9:25 PM GMT  by S-factor




Hi,
Get an internet connection outside your network.
Type "cmd" in run, type "nslookup" in the cmd prompt, then type" set type=mx"
Now type in your domain name e.g example.com, press enter.
This will list your mx records.
Make sure it points to your SBS external IP,
It is quite possible that your ISP mx has the lowest preference(say 10, compared to yours which may be 11 or 20), if that is the case , then it means all e-mails will be delivered to your ISP's mail server.
If you prefer to have all e-mails delivered to your ISP, then you can use the POP3 connector in SBS to pull your e-mails from your ISP. This option will ensure your mails never bounce back even though your server goes down.
The other option is to edit your dns records and give your SBS a lower preference number than your ISP's mailserver. Then all mails come directly to your SBS.

Also, note that if smtp servers don't find an mx record, e-mails are delivered to the A-record or the www record. So, if your ISP hosts your website, and www traffic goes there, then it's quite possible, like I said earlier that all mails are being delivered to your ISP. Remember that it will be much easier to use POP3 connector then.
Let me know how it goes.
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Sirbuks  |   Aug 5 2008  7:51AM GMT

I have a similar problem, i hope you’d be able to help resolve the challenge
I have exchange server 2003 set up on SBS 2003 premium edition, and just like the former. I’d want exchange to interface from my ISP hosting my email.

The way exchange is configured goes thus: I have a local domain email address setup on the exchange for all users.
The pop3 connector downloads emails from users mails from the ISP’s server and distributes to the users exchange mailbox.
The SMTP connector is setup to forward all outgoing emails to the ISP’s server. 2 email addresses are setup on exchange 1. Internal domain name and 2. external domain name(which is the domain name registered with our ISP). The external email @mycompany.com is the primary address.
This actually works well as exchange can send and recieve emails, only for the fact that emails at our external domain i.e our email domain @mycompany.com aren’t routed out of the exchange server. The emails are delivered to the local exchange email box. This is a major concern as our exchange server is not up and running for 24 hours, so emails generated internally wouldn’t be accessible by remote workers as soon as exchange server is down. Is it possible for emails at our domain be sent via the ISP and delivered to the mail server of our ISP and then it would accessible even after it has been downloaded by the pop3 connector as we intend to always leave a copy of our messages on the server.

 

Stevesz  |   Aug 6 2008  7:02PM GMT

I do think that DNS records may be at least part of your problem. If you haven’t already done what is suggested, use <a href="http://www.mxtoolbox.com" rel="nofollow">www.mxtoolbox.com</a> to see what exists for your domain.

An A record should be in place for your domain. (eg. mydomain.com)
An MX record should be in place for your mail server (eg. mailserver.mydomain.com)
A PTR record should be in place for your mailserver, also known as rDNS which allows a lookup of the IP address and points to a canonical name (eg. 192.168.0.5 would translate to mailserver.mydomain.com)

There is also something known as an SOF record that you should include in your setup because more and more people are checking it as a defense against spam. You can use the wizard found at <a href="http://old.openspf.org/wizard.html" rel="nofollow">http://old.openspf.org/wizard.html</a> to create one and then add this to your DNS records where they are hosted.

If everything checks out as far as your DNS goes, then you’ll need to use message tracking to try to determine what is happening with the outgoing messages. You may also want to ramp up the looging in your Exchange istallation to help diagnose where the problem lays with your outgoing mail.