Setting Up Internal E-Mail Server Using Assigned Static IP Addresses

[Northshore]

My network has thirty users running various forms of Windows connected for storage and printing to an NT 4.0 Server. We get to the Internet through a DSL Router. We also get connected to another Unix Server using a proprietary Windows Software package for financial information. We have the ability to connect to our DSL router and financial server by adding a static route in our DSL router nad a route add command on everyone's PC. our address range is in the 210.1.1.xxx range. These addresses are not allowed to be changed as they are assigned by the financial services vendor.
Now we have an Instigate E-Mail server. For us to address this device it needs to be on the 210.1.1.xxx scheme of numbering. (Or so it seems) We now have a web hosting company that created us a web site (xxxxx.com) They also have pointed our incoming mail to our public address of the router and port 110 for our incoming POP mail. It works fine. We had opened the 110 and 25 ports on our router to allow for mail to pass through. The problem we have is that outgoing mail gets stuck in the E-mail server as it can't seem to get out of our network. Instagate has suggested we change the Router's internal gateway address to something allowable (192.168.11.100) from 210.1.1.77. Then they say we should make the mail server 210.1.1.77 which was the internal gateway address of the DSL router. The gateway for the Instagate E-mail appliance should then be set to the new address of the router. Any ideas would be helpful. Thanks

 

[ifincham]

Hi,

Although you gave a long explanation, I'm not quite sure I understand exactly what your network config actually is so its a bit difficult to respond. However, firstly - have you opened outbound port 25 ? If that box acts as a smtp & pop3 server then it should just need port 25 both ways and port 53 for dns plus (possibly) port 113 for inbound ident (some email servers like to verify the calling server's identity). I would have thought that the users would point at port 110 on the mail server itself for their mail and, as such, there would be no need to allow that port out unless you wanted people to access internal email from the internet.

If it's not a firewalling issue, I'm not too clear from your description exactly what's going on but, if you do need routing of some sort, one solution could be to install a second card in your nt server on a different subnet then attach that to a separate hub. You can use the NT box as a router between the two subnets.

Hope this helps