Hosting your own email

[madman045]

Im thinking of registering my own domain, but using exchange to host & send email.

Can anyone recommend a host that would allow me to do this & the process id need to go through to get it setup at the host side of things?

Would not having a static ip be an issue?

Thanks

[Splash]

You'd be needing a static ip - failing that you might want to look into Windows Live Domains...

[Moby-Dick]

not having a static IP might make things a bit trickier ,but you can try and use one of the dynamic DNS services , but I'm not convinced.

you'd need to be able to modify the MX records for any domain you get to point them at either a spooler , which would feed mail to your exchange box , or directly to your mail box ( which woudn't be as good.

some form of spooler would probably be better though.

any reason you can't switch to a statci IP ?

[TeePee]

The hosting company I use lets you do this, they have instructions on their site.

www.qiq.co.uk

They do a pretty good deal on webspace too!

You would need a static IP of course.

[johnny02004976]

QiQ is MINT - i use it for my site - they do EVERYTHING for you, all u do is enter the email address u wnt then download a .reg file which imports into Outlook

Webspace on there is cheap - i think i paid £16 for a year, nice and fast to

[madman045]

I could get a static ip, however bulldog charge an extra £5 a month for it

Was thinking of another provider, however the extra speed is handy & i could always see if work would pay towards it as I do work from home...

[Michael]

If it's just for your personal use, why on earth do you want to use exchange for it?

[madman045]

well I want to learn exchange etc.. also im thinking of maybe starting my own IT site etc..

Ive got SBS 2003, may aswell make use of it.

[Jonny M]

Your router probably offers the ability to update DynDNS or something like that, set this up and then change your domain to a CNAME of the DynDNS address you chose. Your domain will now point to your IP address, and update whenever it changes.

[ikonia]

madman - before you jump in - see this thread.

there was a thread on mail relaying/blacklisting which some users seemed to have problems. I've never had problems due to the technologies I use for mail, however I decided to investigate the problems seen with exchange in a small business / broad band environment.

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=67961

There is a potential for doom with regard to using exchange in this way.

[GDVS]

Your router probably offers the ability to update DynDNS or something like that, set this up and then change your domain to a CNAME of the DynDNS address you chose. Your domain will now point to your IP address, and update whenever it changes.

An MX record should not point to a CNAME. If you want to use DYNDNS then you should not have any MX records at all, email@domain.tld will then go straight to wherever domain.tld resolves to which should be your IP as long as you keep DynDNS up to date.

[Moby-Dick]

An MX record should not point to a CNAME. If you want to use DYNDNS then you should not have any MX records at all, email@domain.tld will then go straight to wherever domain.tld resolves to which should be your IP as long as you keep DynDNS up to date.

If a domain has no MX records then I can't see it handling any mail at all ? I've always configured an A record and pointed the MX record to that - even if they are all the same IP , doesn't the record still have to be present?

[GDVS]

If a domain has no MX records then I can't see it handling any mail at all ? I've always configured an A record and pointed the MX record to that - even if they are all the same IP , doesn't the record still have to be present?

An MX record should point to an A record, not a CNAME, the way you do it is correct. However, if there are no MX records then the IP the domain part of the email address resolves to is used as a last resort.

[Moby-Dick]

ah - sounds about as elegent as broadcast name resolution

There is a way round the statis name issue , and it does work well with SBS.
You host your mail with an upstream host and use the SBS 2003 pop collection to pull it down at regular intervals. You'd use the SBS SMTP server for ourbound mail ( possibly with your ISP's SMTP relay as a smarthost )

the only disadvantage is that you sometimes get a little duplication of mail , and that the most frequest collection interval you can set is 15 minutes, but it does work ( and SBS is designed for this to work as a worst case scenario )

[GDVS]

ah - sounds about as elegent as broadcast name resolution

Hmmm, my description made it sound uglier than it is. It's really very elegant (certainly more so than broadcast name resolution)...

Example 1: domain.example has one properly configured MX record.

Mail server looks up MX record for domain.example which points to an A record mail.domain.example.
Mail server looks up mail.domain.example and gets an IP address.
Mail server makes connection to that IP address and delivers mail.


Example 2 domain.example has no MX records.

Mail server looks up MX record for domain.example and finds there isn't one.
Mail server looks up A record for domain.example and gets an IP address.
Mail server makes connection to that IP address and delivers mail.


Slight simplification as it fails to take account of multiple MX records but that's a minor issue. As you can see the same number of lookups are required in either case, it's just that the direct A record lookup in case of no MX isn't widely known.

[Moby-Dick]

I see your point there - Didn't credit DNS with enough comon sence to try any IP it sees to see if it'll accept mail !