Setting up exchange server. help with godaddy dns setup

[Jwyatt]

Hi, Ive had an exchange server setup for a while for my brothers business. AOL is now blocking his emails because he doesnt have the correct mx records and all this stuff pointing back to the originaltion for the email....at least i think thats why.

Any help to resolve this would be great.

Thanks

 

[netsysadmin]

The answer depends on if you have a static IP or not. If you have a dynamic read the first paragraph. If you have a static read the second one. If you do have a static IP and have issues getting the PTR records setup you can run the setup in the first paragraph and not bother setting up the PTR records. Bothe will work fine.

Both Timewarner and AOL will block emails that come from dynamic IP addresses. What you need to do is go into you SMTP settings on your Exchange server and add in the IP of you ISP's SMTP server into the smarthost box. What this does is forward your email through your ISP's SMTP server thus making it not look like it came from a dynamic IP. I run my Exchange server like that from a dynamic IP and so do a lot of others. If you do that you wont have to worry about PTR records since you ISP has theres setup already.

By the way your MX records have to be setup already since you are receiving emails. What they most likely were talking about is that you need to setup PTR records for reverse lookups. If you are running a static IP then setup your PTR records with whoever is running your public DNS.

John

 

[SunnyD]

Hmm, that's odd. I just setup my Exchange server yesterday, and also had questions about the DNS setup. I'm on Brighthouse Cable, which is essentially TimeWarner down here in the Orlando area. Other than adding a second A record for my mail server (I'm running my own DNS server internally as I'm using AD anyway) pointing to my external IP address, I'm not doing anything else. Tested internally and externally, mail is flowing in both directions just fine.

 

[RebateMonger]

AOL: Troubleshooting AOL Email Delivery

I've found AOL quite responsive if fixing delivery problems to AOL customers. Usually, simply Teleneting to AOL from the Exchange Server will show you the reason for any rejection.

 

[kevnich2]

Are you sure your not actually having a reverse DNS issue? AOL & RR email servers (RR is Time Warner or Bright House in central FL) will usually reject email if the sending email server doesn't have a correct reverse DNS entry. To solve this though, you'll need to contact the ISP that the email server is setup on.

 

[Jwyatt]

It may very well be a reverse DNS issue. Currenty i have an exchange server 2003 that came with sbs2003 setup to check 7 users pop email account hosted at godaddys server pop.secureserver.net.
I have no issues receiving email. Sending goes thorugh hit or miss on some servers. fine on others, and aol wont accept any at all. I havnt tried RR yet(it hasnt came up).

I had/have the smtp setup with default settings. I didnt change anything when i setup the server. So i might have hade an open relay im not sure.

One thing ive tried is relaying through my godaddy, but i keep getting message back saying they wont relay. I have it set in my smtp connection(exchange setting) to use the correct user/password.

IM at a loose right now.

 

[kevnich2]

Why don't you get away from using Godaddy's email and use the exchange server as your only email server. Setup exchange to send and receive email (it sounds as if your notfamiliar with setting up exchange, I'd say look into an SBS consultant). After your exchange is setup properly, make sure the reverse DNS entry is setup with the ISP. After this, change the MX records with GoDaddy for this domain to point to your exchange server and be done. Trying to go through all that POP fetching will only give you problems.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Jwyatt
I had/have the smtp setup with default settings. I didnt change anything when i setup the server. So i might have hade an open relay im not sure.

You have to try REALLY HARD to create open relay with SBS 2003.

The most common problems sending mail to large email organizations like AOL:

1) No Reverse DNS (almost NOBODY checks this, but a few do)
2) Dynamic IP address
3) Known SPAMing IP address or IP range
4) MailServer name doesn't match any valid hostnames for your Domain (AOL will block you after a while if you don't match the names).
5) Sending SPAM

If you can pass all of AOL's tests (that I gave earlier) and if you get no "Red Boxes" when you examine your Domain at http://dnsreport.com, then you shouldn't be having problems sending email.

It also won't hurt to have a SPF record, but I don't know anybody who actually checks it these days. Also, check your mailserver's IP address at http://Dnsstuff.com against the list of known SPAMMERS.

 

[Jwyatt]

Thanks for the help guys. kevnich2, your right. im not familiar with exchange or SBS. Im learning as i go. I did find out why i could not relay through godaddy though. I have 3 domains through godaddy. The relay user/pw is setup on my original user/pw i set up. It works fine with all relaying if i use that one.

The POP fetching your speaking of isnt much of a problem, except the fetch will only work every 15 minutes. I am considering setting up the server as the only email server. Besides setting up DNS and MX records is there anything else that needs to be done? That is after the exchange server is setup.

thanks

 

[kevnich2]

The only real things you have to do with exchange is make sure it can send email ok (a reverse DNS entry with your ISP is needed here), add the specific domain name that you want to receive email from in the in recipient policies as an SMTP address and set it as primary (this ensures this email address is the one sent out for all of your users when sending email), then when you know you can send email ok to all domains, change the MX entry of the domain you have hosted with godaddy to point to your exchange server IP address. Also, make sure the reverse DNS entry is using the same server name as the server is sending out when sending email. You can simply send an email to a yahoo or similar email account and look at the email headers to determine the full server name. This pretty much all you have to do.