using DNS Hinfo to forward emails per email account

Bill Larson wllarso at swcp.com
Tue Sep 21 21:34:31 UTC 1999


As Jim stated, this isn't really a DNS question, except for the fact
that SMTP mail uses MX records (or, I suppose HINFO records in the case
of AT&T).  You have a mail delivery problem which will have to be
addressed by the mail transport agent (MTA), such as sendmail or the MS
Exchange Server.

(By the way, are you sure that you are refering to "HINFO" records,
which are "host information" records, or are you talking about MINFO -
mailbox information, MB - mailbox domain, or MG - mail group, resource
records?  Any DNS resource record could be used by an MTA for mail
delivery, but the "MX", "MB", "MG", and "MINFO" records were developed
for mail purposes, not "HINFO".  Anyway, I will continue using your
"HINFO" term.)

What you are going to need is some mechanism to direct mail addressed
to one system (mail1.foo.bar) to be delivered to another server
(mail2.foo.bar) instead.  You can use an MX record to have mail
addressed to mail1.foo.bar be forwarded to mail2.foo.bar, but then you
have to get this second server to process the mail appropriately.  This
could be done with mail address re-writing using some DNS lookup for an
HINFO record, but you will have to get any information about HOW to do
it from someone other than me.

I suspect that AT&T could easily write a mail delivery agent that uses
HINFO records to redirect their mail.  Why don't you ask them about it
- it would be interesting.

Bill Larson (wllarso at swcp.com)

> Hi Jim, Thanks for the reply,  I understand the HINFO record as it is
> described in RFC document and not being used commonly any more, but I know
> for fact that at&t used HINFO IN <> and HINFO OUT <> records for redirecting
> mail going to their email server mailboxes to different servers at different
> domains.
> 
> I am using MS exchange as mail server, and even though it allows that
> redirection but it does not allow it to be done at server (centralized
> location), that is why I was trying to see if some one had seen that type of
> configuration using the DNS server.


More information about the bind-users mailing list