Re: Very new to SBS - can I send emails without involving ISP?

Hi Bill

BT has very specific systems when running your own Mail server and Domain is
hosted elsewhere.

Initially I would check to see if your domain hoster provides SMTP
facilities. One provider I use 1and1 provides smtp thru auth.smtp.1and1.com
using a mailbox username and password for authentification.

BT has a mail relay procedure:-

http://btbusiness.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/btbusiness.cfg/php/enduser/cci/bt_popup_article.php?p_sid=xlIkMkMi&p_faqid=9&cat_lvl1=368&cat_lvl2=383&cat_lvl3=393&p_cv=3.393&p_cats=368,383,393

This is required EVEN if you send via DNS, it may work initially but BT will
block eventually if mail relay has not been approved.

As it is a business I would suggested you get a fixed IP also BUT costs xtra
£5 per month from them.

Hope this helps.


"Joe" <joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:elNoB1I$HHA.4836@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
BillNewbie wrote:
The ISP is BT (UK) who are not very helpful.

The company which has just installed SBS has a domain name, website and
pop3 inbound email hosted by another party.

Before installing SBS, outbound email was sent via BT's mail server.

In the Connect to Internet Wizard, I set Email Delivery Method to BT mail
server, Email Retrieval Method to Microsoft Connector for POP3, Email
Domain Name to our company's domain name.
Email is being received OK, but not sent.

I saw something about an MX record needing to be set up. Who would need
to do this, the ISP or the domain hosting people?

How can I trace what is happening to the email which is shown in the Sent
Items folder in Outlook?

I would be grateful for any assistance!


The short answer is to move to a professional ISP, away from the bunch
of amateurs at BT. The fact that they're a major country's national
telephone company doesn't mean they understand what Internet facilities
are needed by non-domestic users.

If your account actually has the use of a BT SMTP server, then this is
definitely the way to send email. Even though sending by DNS should
work, many ISPs won't accept mail from BT customers. Firstly, if you do
have a dynamic public IP address, this will put you on many blacklists,
regardless of how your company behaves. Secondly, even if it's a static
IP address, some blacklists still list the range because BT doesn't
provide proper PTR records. This is the reverse DNS record, that
identifies the domain name associated with the IP address. This is
definitely BT's job, not the domain host's, but you'll be lucky to get
anywhere with them.

If there's some problem about using the BT SMTP server, it's probably
easier to fix this than use any alternative.

As to the missing mail, SMTP guarantees eventual delivery or to notify
the sender that it wasn't delivered. This may take some days. Have a
look in the SMTP queues in the Exchange Manager, you'll probably see
the missing emails. Also look in the Message Tracking Center (sic) in
Tools, which should say what state the emails are in.

I'd strongly recommend enabling full SMTP logging, whether you send
by DNS or smarthost. This is done in the Exchange Manager, in
Servers-><your server>->Protocols->SMTP->Default SMTP Virtual Server
and then Properties. On the General tab, tick Enable logging, click
Properties, note the file location, then on the Advanced tab, tick
everything and OK it all.

After you do this, you can see the actual SMTP handshaking for any
email, which includes any error messages. If the information you
get from the queues and the Message Tracking isn't enough to solve
a problem, the SMTP details should be. At the very least, you can
see which receiving mail server was involved, and can contact the
organisation and discuss the matter.

You *will* have other email problems. About a year ago, emails from
my major client to one particular destination were delayed by several
days, and a bit of detective work in the logs identified the problem
as.... BT.


.

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