RichB

Hello fellow IT nerds
If an exchange server is configured inhouse and uses an ISP who has a mail server on a certain IP address. If that ISP changes its mail server IP address what needs to change inside Exchange?
No obvious signs of hard wired IP addresses but is there anywhere that we could have missed or any cache that might need flushing...
Any help gratefully received.
Rich.

Ga22ar

Assuming that this is x55 check the Internet Mail Service setings, which is in the Site container..

One tab, forget which, indicates how to route to the mail domains, it's either by DNS or a specific host.. It's this host that needs changing, don't use a host name as a rule of thumb - always use the IP address.. As this will remove host name resolution issues..

Cheerz

RichB

Hmm, thanks Ga22ar, I think the problem is in this area somewhere. The X server is using a host name but that does resolve correctly in some/most DNS servers. Strangley when doing a whois using networksolutions on one of our domains it points to our DNS server but resolves it incorrectly, DNS queries to other servers resolve correctly. Networksolutions have not yet replied to our queries

I think trying the IP address is the best next step.

Thanks for the advice.
Rich.

WillieF

It would be best as the server is on a dial up account to send all the mail to your dial up host i.e in the case of Demon internet use post.demon.co.uk.

Using the dns option is very unreliable on a dial up account as you have already found out.

Anything else email me off line

Ga22ar

RichB, is the x55 server set to dialup ? or does it have permanent IP connectivty ?

RichB

Er, dial up i think, it's at a customers site. There was a LAN modem mentioned that cached DNS resolves. I don't know much about that but they assure me it was flushed and shouldn't be the cause.

Ga22ar

Ok, having read your first post I now see that there using a smart host, so go to the connections tab on the Internet Mail service for this server.

Enter the IP address for the mail server that the ISP is using for its mail server in the "Forward all messages to host" box.

Ensure that the x55 server can see this ISP mail host, this can be done be performing the following in a cmd box on the x55 server..

telnet x.x.x.x 25

x.x.x.x is the IP address of the ISP mail server, 25 is port 25 (SMTP). You should get a response in the form of a welcome message, stating Mail server type/version and date/time.

Close the cmd box if you get it.. If not you'll need to investigate why not, could be connectivity or maybe the ISP mail server is not responding..

Hope this all helps !!

Cheers

RichB

Thanks guys for the help.
I knew I'd get a rapid response from here.....