? About Priority of Mail Servers

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bgarlock
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Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:28 pm

? About Priority of Mail Servers

Post by bgarlock »

I have my mail servers setup so that the primary, is our in house mail server, with secondary MX from rollernet. Here is how things look:

bash-2.05a$ dig garlockprinting.com mx

; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> garlockprinting.com mx
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 38071
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;garlockprinting.com. IN MX

;; ANSWER SECTION:
garlockprinting.com. 14400 IN MX 10 mail2.rollernet.us.
garlockprinting.com. 14400 IN MX 5 garlock.dyndns.org.
garlockprinting.com. 14400 IN MX 10 mail.rollernet.us.

;; Query time: 58 msec
;; SERVER: 64.202.97.2#53(64.202.97.2)
;; WHEN: Wed Oct 12 14:32:44 2005
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 126


I would like all mail to goto garlock.dyndns.org, which has a priority of 5. Sometimes, I think that rollernet gets mail, and then forwards it to my mailserver, even though my mail server is up.

What affects this, and how can I always have mail go to my primary first, as long as it is up and running? Before I became a rollernet customer, I confirmed that mail did not always go to my primary, by setting up another account with another provider, and add an email address, and have the same account on both mail servers. Even when my primary was up, and running, sometimes mail would get delivered to my "test" account!

Should I increase the 10 to 100 or something?

Thanks for any help...

- Bruce
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Post by RollerNetSupport »

This is quite common, and it usually happens when the sending server decided that it didn't get a response fast enough, so it moves to the next set of MX records. The other time it happens is when spam mailers try all MX records in the hope that one of them will accept the message.

As far as forcing the primary to be used when it is up, there is no way to do this with DNS. To a mail server, the difference between 5 and 10 is the same as 5 and 100. The 5 is primary, and 10 or 100 is secondary. We are working on a new feature that can be used to address this issue (outside of DNS) when using our MX services for backup. Look for an announcement soon.
Technical Support support@rollernet.us
Roller Network LLC
bgarlock
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Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:28 pm

Post by bgarlock »

Great! Thanks for the clarification. Will an announcement be made on this board when you have a solution to this issue?

Best regards,

Bruce
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Post by RollerNetSupport »

Yes, we'll announce it here first and later through email. I like to keep the mass-mail volume down, so multiple service announcements end up combined into one email.
Technical Support support@rollernet.us
Roller Network LLC
vanslyck
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Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2006 5:26 pm
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Post by vanslyck »

I've also noticed that quite a few of my emails are being sent through rollernet even though my server is up and running. Has a solution been found yet?

Thanks!
Carolyn
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Post by RollerNetSupport »

We are planning to add a feature that would poll your mail server to see if it is responding, and enable or disable mail domains accordingly. However, this feature has moved down the priority list.
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Roller Network LLC
kthomas
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Joined: Sun Aug 27, 2006 2:59 pm
Location: Germany

Post by kthomas »

In my opinion this feature should have a very low priority ...

I
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