need help with receiving emails from outside domains on exchange server 2003

April 14, 2008 9:32 AM

How to set up MX records on on a DDNS server (zone edit to receive outside domains email)

I have a Win2k3 server with exchange server installed on it. I use a ddns system (zone edit.com)because my isp is comcast and its just a small home server. I am able to send and receive internal emails with no problem. I am able to send to out side domains like gmail and yahoo but if I try and reply to them I get non delivery notifications. My question is 1st. what should be the mx record I use for zone edit if I should use that at all. 2nd do I need to make changes to my dns server like add reverse look up? 3rd is this something I should set up directly on the exchange server and if so what. any links to wlakthroughs etc would be very helpful. thank you in advance for any help.

posted by antisocialiting to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Its been a long time since I've gone anywhere near an exchange server, but I don't remember there being much to set up on the exchange side of this equation. If you DDNS provider allows MX records, you should be able to add them through their web interface.

Comcast may be blocking typical server ports if you're on a dynamic IP account and not a proper server plan.

Large email providers could be blocking mail from IP addresses known to be consumer connections in an effort to combat spam.
posted by jjb at 10:46 AM on April 14

Yeah, it's common to block mail from (and sometimes to) MTAs that have short MX & A record TTLs.

However, you can send but not re-send? Something is wonky there. The only difference between those two should be in your client, not your MTA.

I suspect that your answer is in that delivery-failure message. Inspect it carefully.
posted by cmiller at 2:50 PM on April 14

yahoo gives this error Sorry, I couldn't find a mail exchanger or IP address. (#5.4.4)
any idesa?
posted by antisocialiting at 5:48 PM on April 14

"Sorry, ... (#5.4.4)" ?

antisocialiting, that's not the whole message. The fifty lines before that and after it matter, too.
posted by cmiller at 6:39 PM on April 14

Return-Path:
Received: (qmail 16924 invoked by uid 60001); 11 Apr 2008 01:39:06 -0000
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws;
s=s1024; d=yahoo.com;
h=X-YMail-OSG:Received:X-Mailer:Date:From:Subject:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Message-ID;
b=NRIK3nNZp5encpVXjGEg5k5hv/Upwhm1lVXFj9/E+VT6omsGln0YyqbI8DxvtK1oE8nQ12D6XckpKJiN+90NiIrdzwFAaVZg9EwcbbfVR6p0GN6REpVCG4URJ+Ff1kPcFA7M+ZQLAnDj4RkbnJ7JCNvIZmpHDixlEEP3zrktZ3A=;
X-YMail-OSG: HLWCNEMVM1ko5SfsTxbRMi64vs4SRXms9pdl1serjdEm4WuEWW2yPWPS4orr06YHnRwbmdrP01b5ZkKZM22wqave2dc1aLwlY.aZPZzWQEwRswGvh92DKVHSdJvzHjM0SFixqpv1751Kx1Uhy.P53MM60w--
Received: from [my ip address] by web62205.mail.re1.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:39:06 PDT
X-Mailer: YahooMailRC/902.40 YahooMailWebService/0.7.185
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:39:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: me
Subject: Re: qweweq
To: Administrator
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0-1392451989-1207877946=:16639"
Message-ID: <3>
posted by antisocialiting at 7:09 PM on April 14