MX Records

[Igmar Palsenberg]

> The company that I work for is hosting it's website at a virtual host
> provider (Webhosting.com), and the domain name is metzgers.com. We have an
> in-house Unix box (Cobalt Qube) that houses our mail (both Pop and SMTP). We
> are connected to the Internet by a NAT dedicated ISDN line that has 24/7
> connectivity. Static IP address is 206.165.56.209 and we have the A name
> media.metzgers.com registered to that IP address. Our router passes the
> request for POP and SMTP ports to the internal address of our Qube.

Yuk... You realize that on a busy line, connectivity really sucks ??
I suggest you store the mail at the provider, who has more bandwith then
6.4 KB/sec, or when lucky, 12 KB/sec.

> The problem that I am having is that mail is delayed from some servers by 24
> hours or more. Mail coming from other locations is instant. Some of the
> messages I am receiving (people are faxing the failure reports to me) are
> Host connect failed - destination host not responding, connection reset, and
> read error.

Seems like the NAT box is very busy.
 
> Prior to this week, the MX record pointed to pop.metzgers.com (which is what
> the webhosting company uses) instead of media.metzgers.com. Mail still got
> here, but we were having problems so we looked into the mx record and
> noticed that it was using pop.metzgers.com instead of media.metzgers.com.
> Could part of the problem be that when changing pop.metzgers.com
> (pop.metzgers.com is no longer setup to anywhere) and some servers have
> cached settings?

It could take a few days to correct.. On bad configged server probably
longer.

> Internal mail of course works fine and sending mail works fine. As I said,
> most mail seems to come through fine also, just not all of it. This is what
> stumps me. It is easier to diagnose something when it effects everything,
> but difficult when it effects part of the situation.
> 
> Here is my MX record, which is maintained by Webhosting.com:
> metzgers.com preference = 10, mail exchanger = media.metzgers.com
> metzgers.com preference = 0, mail exchanger = media.metzgers.com
                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

That looks totally bogus to me.

> metzgers.com nameserver = ns1.dynamicweb.net
> metzgers.com nameserver = ns2.dynamicweb.net
> media.metzgers.com internet address = 206.165.56.209
> ns1.dynamicweb.net internet address = 205.178.159.134
> ns2.dynamicweb.net internet address = 205.178.138.137
> 
> We don't have a backup mail server as of yet, so is both preferences
> required that point to media.metzgers.com? (What is preference=0 used for?
> Webhosting.com tells me that it is the timeout value and is required,
> although as I do a lookup on other servers, it does not appear that many use
> it.) Could that be causing a loop that is delaying the delivery of mail?

The MX records pointing to the same IP doesn't make sense to me.
 
> Should our MX record read:
> metzgers.com preference = 10, mail exchanger = media.metzgers.com
> metzgers.com nameserver = ns1.dynamicweb.net
> metzgers.com nameserver = ns2.dynamicweb.net
> media.metzgers.com internet address = 206.165.56.209
> ns1.dynamicweb.net internet address = 205.178.159.134
> ns2.dynamicweb.net internet address = 205.178.138.137
> 
> Anyway, I am stumped and was hoping that someone would be able to shed some
> light into this issue. You know how people can become when they don't get
> their e-mail, and they are coming after me :-)
> 
> 
> Eric Leslie
> InfoSys/New Media
> Metzgers Printing & Prepress
> ________________________________
> E-mail: eric.leslie at metzgers.com
> Website: www.metzgers.com
> Phone: (419) 861-8611
> Fax: (419) 861-3299




	Igmar