FQDN's and mail MX's

Jim Reid jim at rfc1035.com
Mon May 22 11:47:07 UTC 2000


>>>>> "Ray" == Ray Bush <rbush at scryptography.com> writes:

    Ray> Please help us settle a bit of an arguement here.  Should (as
    Ray> in does it need to be) mail mx's be fully qualified domain
    Ray> names?  

Didn't you try reading RFC1034? I quote:

                MX              a 16 bit preference value (lower is
                                better) followed by a host name willing
                                to act as a mail exchange for the owner
                                domain. 

To the RDATA part of an MX record should have a hostname after the
preference value. That hostname needs to have an A record somewhere
else in the zone file (or in somebody else's zone file if it belongs
to a different domain). To avoid mistakes, I'd recommend that the
hostname is entered as a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN), explictly
terminated with a dot. If this isn't done, the name server will append
its idea of the current domain name - the domain origin - to get a FQDN.



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