Question about MX records

[Kevin Jackson]

Failure is if your mailer can't deliver to server1.
The threshold at which your mailer tries is set in the mailers config files.

If server1 can't be delivered to, it goes to server2.  Server2 then tries to
send it to server1.
Ever receive emails saying "This is just a warning message - your message
was unable to be delivered in the past 4 hours.  Will keep trying for 5
days."

This does exactly what it says on the tin.

I think you are thinking too much about what bind does with MX records and
what your mailer does with MX records.

Kev

-----Original Message-----
From: vo at eudoramail.com [mailto:vo at eudoramail.com] 
Sent: 08 March 2004 16:55
To: comp-protocols-dns-bind at isc.org
Subject: Question about MX records

Hi all:

I have two mail servers:

IN    MX   10   server1 preferred.
IN    MX   20   server2 second choice.

My questions are:

1. What is considered failure? if server1 has a problem
   and gives the incoming connection "connection refused"
   message? will the sending mail server jump to server2
   then? how does the dynamic work?

2. If the DNS server that the incoming mailserver uses
   had cached the info including the old server1 info,
   will the mail server then keep trying it even though
   it's down?

Thanks,
J.


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