Question

Not receiving external emails on Exchange Server

Exchange Server, SMTP, Cisco PIX

A question submitted on SearchExchange.com

We took our exchange server down on Friday and since we brought it back up we have not received external emails.
I can telnet to our ISP SMTP server OK from the exchange server itself but no mail is going out or coming in. No changes were made to the exchange server other than a symantec ghost copy was made and some exchange services were disabled and the server was re-started. I have ensured that all services are running OK.
We have anti-spam software which I am sure is not intervening. I suspect its the cisco pix not allowing mail through.

You have an Exchange Server, so I am not sure why you are testing telnet from the server to the ISP. Instead, you need to test telnet from the Internet to your server's external IP address, which may actually and most probably is an IP address on the Cisco PIX firewall. Since you mentioned taking the Exchange Server down, did you take the entire network down? What kind of Internet connection do you have, are you assigned a DHCP address, or do you have static IP addresses? Does the server itself use DHCP or is it assigned a static IP address? If you want further assistance, feel free to provide your domain name and I or someone in the community will be happy to check external accessibility for you.