Exchange 2000

[FAT64]

Trying to setup an Exchange 2000 Server, mostly went without too much trouble. However, I am unable to receive emails, I can send OK. The DNS/MX records are with my ISP and are working. Anyone got any suggestions as to what I should check??

Thanks.

[At0mic]

It depends how your email has been setup by your ISP. If it’s a group POP account then you need a third party program like IGetMail for pulling the email from your ISP and then delivering it to your Exchange server. Exchange will in turn deliver it to the individual mailboxes. All you need to do is enter your group pop account details into IGetMail and point it to the IP address of your Exchange Server.

If on the other hand, it’s pure SMTP, then you need to instruct your ISP to point email to your IP address and enter in the appropriate pointers in to Exchange Manager. The thing about an SMTP only system is that you will need to talk to your ISP to see if they have any safeguards in place for the unfortunate event that your internet connectivity goes down. Some ISPs will keep the email on their servers until your connectivity resumes. Otherwise, you may loose some email. Group POP is different however, because the email will always stay with your ISP until you collect it.

SMTP is preferable by some firewall/virus scanning appliances which pull email from your ISP and scan it before delivering it to your ISP.

[FAT64]

enter in the appropriate pointers in to Exchange Manager

Whereabouts in Exchange System Manager do I perform this?

[At0mic]

So your using SMTP then?

I got a bit mixed up in what I said. As long as your ISP is directing smtp mail to your IP address and your firewall or router is forwarding port 25 to your exchange servers IP address then everything should be fine.

[chilifrei64]

another thing to add would be to make sure your recipient policy is updated to include your external dns name. This tells your exchange server that it is responsible for incoming mail to the domain you specify

[ixion]

You mentioned that your MX records are up to date, from this I am presuming that you are using SMTP and email will be "pushed" to your exchange server.

the first two things you need to check are your network configuration by asking someone to telnet on port 25 to your external IP address, they should be greeted by an SMTP banner telling them that they are connected - on your internal network try the same thing so you know what the expected result should be. If external people do not recieve this banner then you know its a firewall/port forwarding issue

if your SMTP is ok then the second most important thing is the recipient policy. Open up system manager and navigate to recipient poolicy and double click on default policy. Check that the setting all make sense as far as your dns names are concerned etc.

Also test internal email between two different mailboxes on your exchange server failing any of this

[FAT64]

You presume correctly, ixion. Well, I tried the "telnet" test and externally it failed. I can't believe that my router forwards web and ftp packets correctly and not smtp packets.

[FAT64]

Another issue which has just occured to me is...

If I have separate Web and Exchange servers, port 80 requests will be directed to the Web server and port 25 requests will be directed to the Exchange server, but what if want to access my emails via a browser?? Can a Web server redirect "mail.domain.name/exchange" requests to the Exchange server? Maybe a Proxy server can?

Edited September 12, 2005 by FAT64

[ixion]

chances are your ISP is blocking port 25 not your router if you think your port forwarding is setup correctly. Have a chat with your ISP they will probaby have to do an SMTP relay check before opening up that port for you

To answer your other question. No you cant do what you want to do (unless you use ISA firewall) however there are options.

1) forward port 443 to the exchange server and use https://

2) use your webserver as an OWA server which in turn talks to the exchange server (requires exchange installed on the webserver) in essence this will make your webserver a front-end exchange server

3) if you have multiple IP addresses create a sub domain mail.blah.com and assign that sub domain an alternate IP address

4) use something like ISA server as a firewall which can publish websites running on different servers. For example you can publish server1 as http://blah.com/server1 and server2 as http://blah.com/server2. You need an application level firewall to do this, ISA is the only one I know about which can do this. This does not "forward" ports, it publishes the website - there is a difference

5) if you are running IIS on your webserver you might be able to forward web requests on certain header to another website but Im not sure

[FAT64]

Ixion, matey boy, I think you might be right (about my ISP not relaying port 25) - no-one likes a Smart Alec!

I will get my domain hosted elsewhere, where there are no restrictions.