Question about MX records

Kevin Darcy kcd at daimlerchrysler.com
Tue May 18 02:11:46 UTC 2004


Bruce Embrey wrote:

>Bind-Users:
>
>Currently I have a number of MX records for mail servers. I wanted to be
>able to route incoming mail through my main server and then deliver to
>the appropriate server. Is this possible and how do I do the MX records
>for this to work correctly?
>
>I am using bind 9.2.1 on RedHat Linux.a
>
The question is a little vague. MX records don't describe a whole 
mail-routing topology; just a single hop. If you have only 1 server 
accepting mail, then that's just 1 MX record pointing to it, no matter 
how many other servers may be downstream from it. Once the mail gets to 
your main server, you'll need some other mechanism and/or mail-routing 
database to forward it to the appropriate downstream server(s). If the 
routing decisions made by the main server are based on domains, then I 
suppose you could set up your own little DNS universe on that box with 
"private" MX records not seen on the Internet, for mail-route management 
purposes. But that seems somewhat like overkill -- most MTAs have other 
convenient, non-DNS mechanisms for managing domain-based routing. If 
you're forwarding downstream based on mailbox, then you can't use MX 
records at all, since that mechanism only applies to the domain part of 
an email address (the stuff after the @), not to the mailbox part.

                                                                         
                                                   - Kevin




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