Getting message "Too Many Hops"

[John Horne]

On 11-Oct-00 at 00:35:54 Law wrote:
> I'm not sure if this is a DNS issue or a MS Exchange issue.  But I setup
> my DNS server to point the MX record to my Exchange mail box.  Everytime
> I send email from the outside to my new email box I get a reply that it
> failed because there are too many hops.
> 
Look at the 'Received:' header lines of one of the failed messages. It should
show you the 2 machines the message is bouncing between. Then check (a) the
machines DNS entries; (b) the MTA configuration of the machines. Somewhere
amongst that lot something is telling machine 'a' to send the message to
machine 'b', and 'b' is being told to send it to 'a' :-)

I guess a possibility is if the MTA configuration has been modified to
reduce the number of hops, and your message just happens to pass through
more machines than is allowed. Not likely, but you never know. I think our
limit is 30 hops; it used to be 17.

John.

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John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK           Tel: +44 (0)1752 233914
E-mail: jhorne at plymouth.ac.uk
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