Domain MX Record

2014/07/03 16:13

1. MX Record

If the mail server you have created is only used in LAN, or you have chosen map mail server mode, then you can create the domain name as you wish, and you don't need the real Internet mail domain name or modify the domain MX. And you can't modify the MX, because the real Internet domain name does not belong to you.

If your domain name has been registered in the Internet, then the domain MX record should be modified on "Domain Control Panel" (If you don't know how to do it, please contact the domain provider), and there is no need to do any settings on AAMail.

2. What Is MX Record

MX (Mail Exchanger) Record is a mail exchange record. When you send mails via email system, it can locate the mail server according to the recipients' email address suffix. For example, when a user sends a mail to "user@mydomain.com" through Internet, and its email system checks "mydomain.com" domain MX record through DNS, if the MX record exists, the mail will be sent to the mail server which is specified by MX record.

Take "hotmail.com" for example, if it has four mail servers, and their MX addresses are mx1.hotmail.com, mx2.hotmail.com and so on. A domain name can be set multiple MX records, and each MX record is related to a mail server. And the multiple MX records are ordered by setting priority. MX record is also a modification of DNS, and this change will usually take a few minutes to 48 hours for refreshing the entire Internets' DNS caches.

For creating the Internet mail server, your domain name must be the real Internet domain name, and then you need to configure the domain MX record to your server. Internet Mail Server means that accounts on this server will be able to receive mails from the Internet directly. For example, if "sina.com" sends you a mail, it will connect to your server directly, and send the mail to AAMail through SMTP interaction. And the domain MX record is to let "sina.com" find your server IP address's DNS records.

3. Set the Mail's Domain MX Record

If the ISP providers are different, the control panels will be different either. If you don't know how to set the mail's domain MX record, you can ask your ISP provider for help, or tell us your domain login account and password, and we will help you to configure it.

Suppose your domain name is "yaozhi.com", and your server IP is "210.23.109.2". Please see the below introduction about the steps of modifying domain MX record.

1) Login the domain management panel.

2) Create an "A" record, and specify the value of external IP (such as 210.23.109.2).

3) Create a "MX" record, and specify the value as the record "A" which you just created (such as "mail.yaozhi.com").

4) Both of your company's SMTP server IP and POP3 server IP will be as "mail.yaozhi.com".

After created the domain name and account, configured the firewall/router (NAT) and domain MX record, the whole setting processes are completed. And you can test sending and receiving mails now. Right now, we recommend you clicking "Tool ->Diagnose wizard" to diagnose the running status of your server. If you encountered any problems during this process, please send the diagnose report to us, which will be helpful for us to solve these problems.

4. Diagnose the MX Record Settings

After setting the domain MX record, about 8 hours later, you can diagnose whether the MX record has been correctly set or not. There are two methods to diagnose it.

A. Use the Online Diagnose Tool

Input "http://www.aamailsoft.com/mx.php" in the browser's address bar, then type the mail server's domain name into "Your Domain Name" edit box, and click the "Detect" button to execute the diagnosis. Take "aypower.net" for example, you can see the domain MX record (Figure 1-1).

MX Online Diagnose

Figure 1-1

B. Run the "nslookup" Command

Enter the Windows command window, and type "nslookup -qt=mx 'domain'", then you can execute the diagnosis.

Suppose the result of nslookup -qt=mx 263.net is as below, you can find that the domain MX of 263.net is mx.263.net. Then, you can type telnet mx.263.net 25 to check whether the server is running normally (Figure 1-2).

Command Diagnose

Figure 1-2