Hi, I am setting up a test Exchange 2003 network - doing Exchange 2003 exam. I am having difficulty sending and receiving internet mail. My domain is hosted by an ISP. My internal domain name is not the same as the external. I have setup a virtual server and an smtp connector with a smart host pointing to my ISP. I have a front-end and back-end server.My front end server is connected directly to my ADSL router which has a static IP address (given to me by my ISP). I have included two DNS forward lookup zones on my DNS server, only configured to listen on one NIC (front-end is multi-homed). I have received bouncebacks when trying to send mail to my domain from an external email address stating my SMTP could not be contacted. Where am I going wrong?

How do you send mails to your test environment? Have you configured MX Records? Deli

Can you telnet to port 25 of your public IP from outside your network? If not, its probably the firewall, if so, its MX as Deli stated.

Hi, thanks for the reply. I send mail to test environment through google, hotmail and yahoo mail. Yes, I have configured the MX Records. I currently have no way of telneting from outside of my network. I have run smtpdiag and it runs successfully. thanks

If MX is correctly configured then the next step is to diagnose if Telnet yourserver.domain.com 25 works You can verify MX records nslookup.exe >set type=mx >yourdomain.com This will display the records that are configured If you need to check DNS records on the internet you may need to connect to the server first when using nslookup nslookup.exe >server <ISP DNS SERVER> >set type=mx >yourdomain.com Deli

Thanks Deli, I have tried all this before and all seems OK. I think it may be configuration of either virtual server or connector. I have removed the back-end and am testing just through one server and will proceed to add things to see when things stop working. Thanks for your reply. Monica