cant seem to receive mail from the outside???

[user3657]

this is driving me nuts. i cant get any email from the outside.......i can send and receive fine within the domain, but outside i can only send. In outlook express it connects fine, no errors. But its not grabing any mail, unless it was sent from inside. Everything was working fine, untill my isp said i was sending spam, so i freaked and got a little crazy in exchange messing with settings(but im pretty sure one of my other pcs was sending out spam cuz nod32 found a rootkit on it, so i formatted it and tightened up exchange just to make sure. Im not sure if it matters but i am on a cable modem and i had turned it off untill i could format my other pc etc, and my dchp ip lease expired and i got a new ip, not sure if it matters i dont think it does. if i use hotmail to send my domain a message i dont get an error i just get a "your message has been delayed" a day later.

again, i can send email from my domain to an outside domain, ie, hotmail, but i can not receive anything from the outside in.

 

[MarkArnold]

What are you doing with your ISP DNS to get your domain name registered?
You're on a DHCP address so you either need to have an arrangement with whoever hosts your domain or you're using something like dyndns to announce your mail server.

Need more information on the mechanism you have for inbound, ignore the actual server for now.

 

[user3657]

hey, i am using everydns.net to forward the mx zone(along with http) to my ip. it says mx: myip : rating/zone:1. I also use the same service to forward http requests and that is working fine.

 

[MarkArnold]

So when you're at home and try to telnet to your mail server by either IP or name, what do you get?

 

[user3657]

220 server1.xxx.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.379
0.3959 ready at Sat, 3 Nov 2007 16:02:05 -0400

this is what i get from using another pc on the network(home).


i am typing telnet servername/domain/ip port(ive tried connecting using all 3, and they all work), if u want me to go any farther i dont know how. I can also get acccess to another pc off my network.

 

[user3657]

i would like to add that from a pc off this network, telnetting fails, trys to but then says unable to connect. i get this for. i tried ports 80/25 and no port. i know port 80 is working because my website is accessible

 

[MarkArnold]

When I said try this from home I made the assumption that you were having problems at work. So you're saying that the telnet to 25 works fine when you're on the local network (I don't care where it is) but when you're on the other side of a firewall or router you can't access it?

Is your ISP blocking SMTP (TCP 25) traffic to your network? Many do, specifically to stop you running an SMTP server that isn't protected properly (as you have admitted yours wasn't).

 

[user3657]

yep telnet only works from the inside. port 25 is open, i can always call them to make sure my modem is configed right but i still cant telnet into port 80.....but i know port 80 is working because i host a few sites. everything was working untill i messed with exchange/got a new ip. I dont know what did it because i never used the pc untill both things happened.

 

[user3657]

i would like to add that i got it working, i had to enable "anonymous access" under smtp virtual server. I am confused because i though smtp was used for outgoing mail? And I am really confused as to why i was able to log in, pull email if it was sent locally, but why was outside mail not getting in.


so, i just seen this:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996967.aspx

" SMTP virtual servers that accept mail from the Internet must allow anonymous access. " I am wondering how much of a security risk this is, if any?

 

[MarkArnold]

Anonymous access is essential. Otherwise you have to give every SMTP server on the Internet a user name and password so it can access your Exchange server. Obviously that's not possible!!
Anonymous access isn't a security risk to your system. You are confusing allowing anonymous access with relaying. They are not the same. Allowing anonymous access only allows a server on the Internet to send you a message. It does not allow them to use your server as a relay point to somewhere outside.