Question on MX record? Can somebody help?

[Kevin Darcy]

Read RFC 2821. It explains, among other things, how mail servers use
MX records for failover and load balancing.


- Kevin

PKT wrote:

> I noticed that several companies have several mx record. ex:
>
> ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 34340
> ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 3
> ;;      kmart.com, type = MX, class = IN
> kmart.com.              1D IN MX        20 smtp1.kmart.com.
> kmart.com.              1D IN MX        20 smtp2.kmart.com.
> kmart.com.              1D IN NS        usdmzsvpdns2.kmart.com.
> smtp1.kmart.com.        1D IN A         208.247.100.37
> smtp2.kmart.com.        1D IN A         208.247.100.38
> usdmzsvpdns2.kmart.com.  1D IN A  208.247.100.30
>
> Let say smtp1 server crash.  Does mail automatically try the second server?
>
> My company is thinking about using two different ISP, Earthlink and
> Bellsouth.
> both uses ADSL.  Is possible to configure where if one line goes down,
> incoming mail will try the other ip address?  Both IP address will be bind
> to the same server.  One ISP will host both IP.
>
> Any help is appreciated...