Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with MX

How do you spell D-N-S?

fijiwriter — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 07:54:32 -0800

How do you explain DNS, A records, MX records, etc. to your staff and clients? What's the best way to get non-technical people to understand this? In my line of work, we have new co-workers who know just a little bit of what DNS is. Usually, it's their understanding of how a person finds a website or gets email to someone. And that's pretty much it.

So, I'm considering a primer of what DNS is, what it does, why it's important, what role A/MX/www records play, and the like.

What have you seen online, preferably with graphics, that you've used to explain to people what's going on in such a foreign concept? Or, how have you explained this subject?

Yes, I know there are Internet for Idiots-type books out there and Wikipedia entries, but that is a Step 3, and we're just on Step 1.

Two MX records for one domain?

tiamat — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 06:51:12 -0800

It is possible to have two distinct email servers (for two sets of non-overlapping addresses) for the same domain? I think this is impossible, but I could be wrong.

I have a domain, example.com. I would like to be able to give my users the option of using one of two services for their email.

On the one hand, we have the default setup where the DNS MX record for the example.com and mail.example.com resolve to the ISPs mail server, which provides POP/IMAP and web mail.

On the other hand, if I rewrite that MX record I can use a service such as Windows Live or the new Gmail on your own domain service and allow my users a slightly nicer experience, and a lot more storage space than I can afford to supply.

The problem is that some accounts already forwarded to regular gmail accounts, and I don't want to disable that.

So what I would like to do is have a few accounts run through the 'other' service (say, Windows Live) and the rest (including catch-alls and non-existent) stay on the ISPs server.

I have access to the DNS and can make pretty much any reasonable request of my ISP in terms of changing server settings, but is this even possible?

The web based admin package my ISP supplies allows me to create mail forwards for accounts, but they forward to other email account, I guess what I need to be able to do is forward specific accounts to a different server. Is that possible?

It's easy enough to trick the servers for outgoing mail, as you can send email from anywhere as anyone, the problem would be ensuring the incoming mail for user1@example.com would go to the ISP, and at the same time send user2@example.com to hotmail.com/gmail.com

Flash MX

drezdn — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 13:00:33 -0800

Flash MX question, is there a way to load a page from blogger (or an xml page) into a dynamic text block with a scroll bar?