Exchange Server 2003 - Hosting our own email

We have been using Soft Talk's "WorkGroup Mail" for our in-house mail server, however, we recently decided to move to Exchange Server 2003.

I have installed the Exchange Server Software, I have communications going out to the web on SMTP, but I am unable to accept inbound email. My MX records are good, I am just not sure how to make sure that inbound email is arriving ok.

Anyone have some insight or suggestions that might be helpful to me.

This is my 1st time using Exchange Server. I know very little about it, other than what I have been gleening from websites on the matter.

Thanks !

 

If your MX record is good you should be able to get to exchange from the outside from http://mail.yourdomain.com/exchange

That would verify your MX is correct.
Second is port 110 forwarded through the router to your server IP?

Is your WAN IP static or are you using some type of dynamic dns?

 

You shouldn't have to forward port 110 unless you are allowing users on the Internet to grab e-mail from the exchange server via POP3.

• either:
  If your incoming e-mail is coming via SMTP, you need to forward port 25 (incoming) from your firewall to your Exchange server.
  
• or:
  If you are grabbing your mail from your ISP via POP3, your MX record needs to point at your ISP's mailserver and your firewall needs to allow (not forward) the server to go outward to your ISP's mailserver on port 110.

As you are altering MX records, I assume you are using SMTP for incoming mail. The key to getting this to work, is that external mail servers can access your Exchange server listening port (that's port 25).

So first thing to check is that your Exchange Server has port 25 open and is listening on that port. The simplest way to do that is from a PC within your network using telnet.

So say the internal address of your Exchange server is 10.1.1.1, you would do this:

Code:

telnet 10.1.1.1 25

That tells telnet to connect to the server on port 25. If you get a connection, you should just get a blank screen, or a message back from the server. You can test the connection by entering helo (that's not a type - single L). Ctrl-C should disconnect you.

If you can't telnet into port 25 from within your network, either Exchange is miss-configured or not running - and therefore is not listening on port 25; or there is a firewall running on the Exchange server that is blocking port 25.

If you can get a connection from within your network, the next thing to try is the same test from a PC on the internet. This time using your external IP address rather than the internal. So say 11.1.1.1

Code:

telnet 11.1.1.1 25

If you can't connect, your firewall or router NAT are not configured correctly to forward port 25 to the Exchange server.

 

Also you may need a RDNS record.

 

You don't need a RDNS record for SMTP mail to work. Reverse lookup zones make things work more smoothly, but you can usually manage without then.

Are you thinking of an anti-spam tool needing to reverse lookup the IP address to verify a sender?

 

Thanks for the catch Reggie I had a senior moment with the brain and it flipped port 25 and 110.

 

I don't know which of us should be more worried - you with your senior moments, or me with my geek moments. Perhaps I should get a life one day!

 

Yes Reggie i was referring to Spam. Since most everyone has some sort of Spam filter this is an absolute must for most of our Exchange servers.
Mail servers with no reverse DNS will have a hard time getting mail to certain large ISPs

 

Good point then!

In case the original poster needs more information, here is a description of what reverse lookup zones are:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/164213

And a guide to managing them

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windo...86f1-4b89-8e44-79f768963e951033.mspx?mfr=true

However, for most SMEs the key reverse lookup will be hosted on their ISP's DNS server as they will host their Internet DNS records. In this environment the system that works well is to host local DNS resolution on the Active Directory server and to forward resolution of internet addresses to the ISP's DNS servers. For such systems having a local (on the AD server) reverse lookup pointing at the mail server will have limited use.

Perhaps another example of why having a good relationship with a good ISP is so important.