Exchange 2003 Pop3/SMTP

[stuartg1]

Hi All,

The first post is always a question!

Erm, I have an SBS Server collecting emails from my ISP via POP3 (catch-all). I also have McAfee Groupshield on the SBS which refuses to scan anything on port 110, and only scans port 25. This means nothing is being scanned at the moment, but I am no expert so I am unsure as to what to do.

My initial thought was a small application (hopefully freeware) which deals with the POP3 pull to the ISP, and then relays the mail to the loopback address on port 25. then set the SMTP connector on the SBS, to receive mail for my domain, anyone know of one? (Sorry if this is confusing, brain dump).

If your thoughts are, "change your MX record, let port 25 through and stop using pop3". I am aware this would be best, however our connection to the net is very weak, and bouncebacks would definately occur.

Help much appreciated, I wait in hope that something can be done. (I spent the last 30 mins googling).

 

[ShackDaddy]

Well, I don't know how to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish directly, but as to your last statement, you could put your server as the primary MX record and your ISP's as the secondary and tertiary and leave your POP3 connectory in place. That would set things so that your McAfee usually scanned everything that came in on port 25 and then if your connection was wonky, that mail would come in up to 15 minutes later when your POP3 Connector went out and grabbed what landed at the ISP. That would essentially turn the POP3 connector and your ISP into a backup mail server...but mail would not be scanned there.

Another option, which is what I do with all my clients, is set them up with MXLogic and have all my incoming mail prescanned by them for around $3 a mailbox per month. Then I'm not managing any extra software on my server, and if my connection goes down, MXLogic will queue my mail for days if they need to and provide web access to the mail until my connection is restored. The web mail the provide access to includes seven days mail from before the outage, so users will really be able to use it to take care of business. I have this set up for a couple of businesses that have pretty sketchy internet access, and it's been a pretty smooth ride for them.

Hopefully someone else can weigh in with an engineering trick for you. It may be that you just want to install a freeware mailserver on one of your internal workstations to act as a gateway/relay, and have it forward the mail to your SBS box, rather than worrying about some little app to do the same thing. Check out Argosoft:

http://www.argosoft.com/rootpages/MailServerNet/Default.aspx

Dave Shackelford
Shackelford Consulting