question about MX records

[jkcunningham]

I think I might be confused about exactly what an MX-record is.
Is it possible to set up a webserver and a mail server at different locations with the same domain name? This is in the context of a small business which is paying for web-hosting but wants to take over their own mail servers in house.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Thanks
-Jeff

[msalerno]

Yes, you can host the mail and web on different servers. Basically, when you send an e-mail to foo@bar.com the sending SMTP server looks up the domain bar.com and locates the MX record. So for example, the sending SMTP server would see that the first MX record points to mail.hostingcompany.com, so it would send it to that mail server. If that mail server is down, it will try to send it to the next MX record mail1.hostingcompany.com.

bar.com MX 5 mail.hostingcompany.com
bar.com MX 10 mail1.hostingcompany.com

I hope that this is clear.

[kashani]

Part of your confusion may come from the fact that in the absence of a MX record mail servers will send the mail to the A record be default. So if you have no MX it'll default to whatever domain.com points to.

kashani
_________________
Will personally fix your server in exchange for motorcycle related shop tools in good shape.

[jkcunningham]

Thanks for the replies.
How do you change the MX record?

-Jeff

[msalerno]

You would find out which dns server hosts the domain and then make the changes. If your domain is hosted on your web hosts DNS server you will have to make the changes through them. Some web hosts have web interfaces that will allow you to make the changes yourself.

# dig domain.com SOA

[jkcunningham]

Thanks. That was exactly what I needed to know.

-Jeff