Please Help? MX and domain name issue

[Danny Mayer]

At 01:18 AM 4/10/02, Mark_Andrews at isc.org wrote:

> > On 9 Apr 2002 14:55:27 -0700, Barry Margolin <barmar at genuity.net>
> > wrote:
> >
> > >In article <a8vmdg$2f9 at pub3.rc.vix.com>,  <scottf at oit.edu> wrote:
> > >>Some stupid mailers ignore MX records, end up trying to go through the
> > >>IP address associated with domain.edu
> > >
> > >I doubt this very much.  MX records have been in use almost since the
> > >beginning of the Internet, and any mailservers that ignore them would have
> > >difficulty reaching many sites, since many organizations are set up 
> the way
> > >you are.  Do you have specific examples of sites that route mail
> > >incorrectly, or are you investigating this just in case?
> >
> > Well, I've been getting bounced messages that are going to
> > unknown at domain.edu through the webserver. Oldest headers are like
> > "received from: someserver by webserver.domain.edu for
> > unknown at domain.edu" The original mailer in this case appears to be
> > NTMail 5.03. According to the documentation for NTMail, it "sees" MX
> > records. According to the old (BIND 4.8.3) "DNS and BIND" book that I
> > have, at the end of the chapter about DNS and Electronic Mail, there
> > are some "boneheaded" mailers on the Internet that don't use MX
> > records. The author claims "it's a fact of life on the Internet." So,
> > I was thinking that my problem stemmed from a boneheaded mailer. I
> > dumped the bounced messages, but I'm sure to get some more tonight and
> > I can post the headers tomorrow.

I've used NTMail for years and I know the owner of the company that
sells it and I can assure you that it follows all of the RFC's and uses
MX records if they exist.  Someone may have misconfigured the server
or is doing this deliberately.  You need to contact the owner of the server
and have them fix it.

> >
> > I'm thinking I'll have to set up a redirect as Kevin suggested, 'cause
> > I don't know why I would want the webserver acting as an SMTP server.
> >
>
>         I recommend just turning off the smtp server on the http
>         server.
>
>         At this point in time about the only mail clients that
>         ignore MX records are those used by spammers attempting to
>         bypass security.
>
>         The need for A records to help those old mailers has long
>         past.  MX only domains have been a fact of life on the
>         Internet for many years.  I administered several ~10 years
>         ago and never in all the years I was postmaster for that
>         site did I have one complaint about reachabilty due to
>         there only being MX records.
>
>         Mark
>--
>Mark Andrews, Internet Software Consortium
>1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
>PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: Mark.Andrews at isc.org


         Danny