'A' record 1

[kimble]

I named my w2k domain is the same as my web space domain. Yet I use a web hosting company. I want my MX record changed yet my A record needs to point to the server that hosts the web page. Is there a way to let my domain name point to both the web server and my mail server?

Or, Do i have to rename my PDC?

 

[sobak]

If I understand your question correctly, you want your MX record to point to a server that resides on your network but your A record resolves to a server at your Web Hosting site.

If this is correct then yes it is possible to have your MX record point to a different system than your A record. I host both mail and our web site on our internal network, but both of them reside on different servers. I contact my ISP and tell them I want the A record to point to 10.10.10.1 and my MX Record to point to 10.10.10.2. This way when people go to my web site it resolves to my IIS server and when people send me e-mail it goes to my mail server.

Hope this helps.....

david e
*end users are just like computers, some you can work with...others just need a simple reBOOTing to fix their problems.*

 

[kimble]

Thanks for a clear cut answer. I think my problem has been my ISP. They are a phone company acting as an ISP and don't know what they are doing. I told them to change my mx record to point the static ip they gave me. yet the people i've talked to there say that they need a name and not an ip to point the mx record to. this leads me to believe they are idiots because all they should have to do is add an a record like so

I want this
domain.com MX = 1.2.3.4

yet to do this don't you just do

domain.com MX = mail.domain.com
then add an A record of
mail.domain.com IP = 1.2.3.4

I'm assuming that when you send an email message vs a web request something knows to point the email message to the MX record And the web request to the A record

thanks again

 

[sobak]

Kimble,

Here is my DNS record from my ISP, this may help. I believe they create a sub-domain to mydomain then place that in their DNS table then replicate it out to the internet, once the mail comes in for mydomain.com it reads the MX Record and then sends it on to the sub-domain "A" record that is assigned to the IP Address of my mail server. I actually have two different IP Addresses for the same server setup for redundancy. My primary IP Address (inet) is my main connection, the secondary ip address(Inet2) is for a backup connection. If I loose my primary route to the internet my secondary route will then kick in and mail going to mydomain.com will continue down the secondary pipe. Your ISP is not totally wrong, they do need a name to associate with an IP Address but they just don't know how to work around it. Hope this helps



mydomain.com. 21600 SOA b.ns.verio.net. dns.verio.net. (
2001081501 ; serial
21600 ; refresh (6 hours)
3600 ; retry (1 hour)
1728000 ; expire (20 days)
86400 ) ; minimum (1 day)
mydomain.com. 21600 NS dfw.nkn.edu.
mydomain.com. 21600 NS dfw.nkn.net.
mydomain.com. 21600 NS b.ns.verio.net.
mydomain.com. 86400 A 10.10.10.99
mydomain.com. 600 MX 10 inet.mydomain.com.
mydomain.com. 600 MX 20 inet2.mydomain.com.
dns1.mydomain.com. 86400 A 10.10.10.102
ldap.mydomain.com. 86400 A 10.10.10.100
inet2.mydomain.com. 86400 A 10.10.10.179
ctxs.mydomain.com. 86400 A 10.10.10.100
pop.mydomain.com. 86400 A 10.10.10.100

http://www.mydomain.com.

86400 A 10.10.10.99
ftp1.mydomain.com. 86400 A 10.10.10.99
inet.mydomain.com. 86400 A 10.10.10.100
ftp.mydomain.com. 21600 CNAME

http://www.mydomain.com.

david e
*end users are just like computers, some you can work with...others just need a simple reBOOTing to fix their problems.*

 

[kimble]

So here your main mail server's IP address is 10.10.10.100

Does it matter at all what you call your machine or what it's domain is called.

In your case your machine doesn't have to be called

inet.mydomain.com, it just has to have the IP address 10.10.10.100
Is that correct?

 

[sobak]

correct, no one really connects to inet.mydomain.com, the MX record states that the mail is being handled by that domain name. Ultimately it resolves the address to 10.10.10.100 and sends all mail to that address. david e
*end users are just like computers, some you can work with...others just need a simple reBOOTing to fix their problems.*

 

[kimble]

so in your last response am i correct in assuming that you agreed that it doesn't matter what your machine is called. Just as long as your IP and DNS records are correct?

The only thing i see about having your machine and network name the same as your domain name is when you send an email to person@mydomain.com your email doens't leave the network if they are named the same. If they are completely different then i would need to be sent to an ISP's smtp server and the resolved and sent back.

Is that also correct.

Thanks for all your answers you've been a big help.

 

[sobak]

I believe it depends on your mail server software. I use GroupWise so all my internal accounts are resolved by the GroupWise server. If the mail server is smart enough to know that person@mydomain.com resides locally then it would not send it to the ISP, it could resolve the name without sending it to your ISP for delivery. Not all mail servers are smart enough for that. I'm up on GroupWise and MS Exchange and some other small e-mail servers. All of the ones I use know that mydomain.com is local and attempt to resolve the account on the local postoffice before sending it to the ISP for delivery.......

david e
*end users are just like computers, some you can work with...others just need a simple reBOOTing to fix their problems.*

 

[sobak]

Oh and you are correct, name doesn't matter since it ultimately belongs to mydomain.com. david e
*end users are just like computers, some you can work with...others just need a simple reBOOTing to fix their problems.*

 

[kimble]

New question...along the same line. Does anyone know if nslookup gives you the most recent version of DNS records. In having my MX record changed I keep checking with nslookup yet the MX record is still set to the odd address. My ISP has told me they changed it yet its been 2 days so how can i tell if they really have?

Also is there an easy way to trace an email and know what alias's it uses to get from one place to another?? I know my ISP set up alias for my account, but in changing my MX record I should no longer need the alias's. I'd like to check that my email is no longer using the alias's and going the true route. Just one other way for me to see what my ISP has done.

 

[sobak]

Take a look at this we site. It will give you a lot of information regarding your domain.....

http://samspade.org

Type in your domain name and let it do it's stuff.

Most of the time the information is scheduled to replicate out. My ISP sends all updates out at 3:00am CST, of course I have a short TTL on my DNS entries. If I'm not mistaken, I have a 6 hour TTL on my DNS names. It's up to your ISP to set the TTL for your domain. An internet DNS server will not request a new (or update) its DNS Cache until the TTL has been reached. If they have a long TTL set for the DNS Cache then it will take that much longer for your changes to replicate out across the internet. To ensure your ISP has done what you asked them, go to network solutions and do a whois on your domain. This will give you the DNS servers where your domain resides, if you point your workstation DNS entry to point to that location you can see if it's updated it's own table. Before replication can start, the owning DNS server has to have it in it's table first.

As far as your e-mail alias, I believe samspade.org should show you who is handling your mail for you. Whether it's the alias or your own server. If the DNS entries have been setup properly then the entry at samspade.org should be correct.....

david e
*end users are just like computers, some you can work with...others just need a simple reBOOTing to fix their problems.*