UNIX hosts and MX "best practice"

[Barry Margolin]

In article <7YLM$5bXw-B at khms.westfalen.de>,
Kai Henningsen <kaih=7YLM$5bXw-B at khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>barmar at bbnplanet.com (Barry Margolin)  wrote on 28.01.00 in
><2fqk4.51$7O6.1036 at burlma1-snr2>:
>
>> In article <38923337.923869FC at sas.upenn.edu>,
>> John H. Yates <yates at sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
>> >What is considered "best practice" for UNIX hosts these days? To
>> >assign a UNIX host its MX record as itself, or to leave it unspecified?
>>
>> Any name that you expect to be used frequently after '@' in email addresses
>> should have an MX record.
>
>Also any that are targets of PTRs for IPs that other people's MTA might  
>receive mail from (i.e., typical dialin blocks). Dialin reverse domains  
>without MX are fairly rude, IMAO.

Why?  Just because a machine sends mail out doesn't mean that anyone is
supposed to send mail back to it.  Most dialin users don't run SMTP servers
on their machines, so having MX records that point to them wouldn't work at
all.

Remember: this discussion is about whether to have MX records that point
back to the same name, e.g.

foo.com.  MX 10  foo.com.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
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