[Techtalk] Routing mail

[Diggy Bell]

When your domain is set up in the DNS server, there are one or more 'MX'
(Mail eXchange) records.  These MX records are used to route the mail to the
appropriate server.  Here's a sample:

$ORIGIN .
$TTL 3600 ; 1 hour
example.com IN SOA ns1.yourisp.com dns.yourisp.com (
    1 ; serial
    3600 ; refresh
    600 ; retry
    21600 ; expire
    3600 ; minimum
)
    NS    ns1.yourisp.com
    NS    ns2.yourisp.com
    A    0.0.0.0
    MX 10 mail.example.com
    MX 20 mail2.example.com
$ORIGIN example.com
ftp    CNAME    example.com
mail    A    0.0.0.1
mail2    A    0.0.0.2
www    A    0.0.0.3

When you send mail to user at example.com, the MX records indicate that
mail.example.com should receive the mail.  If the message cannot be
delivered to mail.example.com, mail2.example.com should be used instead.
This hostname (mail. or mail2.) is then looked up and the message is then
sent to the proper mail server.

HTH

William D. 'Diggy' Bell
Principal
DB Software Development
http://www.dbsoftdev.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Richter" <daniel.richter at wimba.com>
To: <techtalk at linuxchix.org>
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 1:04 AM
Subject: [Techtalk] Routing mail


> Hi everyone.
>
> As I understand it, a mail to me at foo.com may automatically be routed to
> mail.foo.com. But does anyone know how the SMTP server knows that mail to
> foo.com is actually supposed to go to mail.foo.com?
>
> ========== Dan Richter ============== mailto:Dan at wimba.com ===========
>   Indeed, I've noticed a number of these [virus] emails today - I'd
>   click on it, have a laugh and delete it. Of course, I run Linux so
>   I am completely immune - Windoze users, do not try this.
>         - "sloanster", on Slashdot
>
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