Knowledgebase

Overview:

A mail exchanger (MX) entry determines which server receives mail for a domain name. The Edit MX Entry interface allows you to configure the entry for each destination mail server.

How to edit MX entries

To edit your server’s MX entries, perform the following steps:

1. From the Choose a Domain to Edit menu, select the name of the domain for which you wish to configure MX entries.

2. Click Edit. A new interface will appear.

3. Select the Email Routing setting that you wish to use. For more information, see the Email Routing table below.

4. Enter the desired settings for each MX entry in the MX Entries section.

5. Click Save.

Email Routing

You can select any of the following Email Routing settings for your mail exchangers:

• Automatically Detect Configuration — Select this setting to allow the system to choose the most appropriate Email Routing setting, based on a query of the MX record. The system queries the MX record and uses the following criteria to determine the Email Routing setting:

  • If the lowest priority mail exchanger points to an IP address on this server, the system selects the Local Mail Exchanger setting.

  • If a mail exchanger with a higher priority points to an IP address on this server, the system selects the Backup Mail Exchanger setting.

  • If there are no mail exchangers that point to an IP address on this server, the system selects the Remote Mail Exchanger setting.

    Note:

    The system cannot perform automatic detection for this setting if the MX entry does not resolve (for example, if you mistype a domain name or enter one that does not exist). If the MX entry does not resolve and the Email Routing setting is Automatically Detect Configuration, the system generates a warning and defaults to the last known Email Routing setting.

     

• Local Mail Exchanger — Select this setting to cause the server to always accept mail for the domain.

• Backup Mail Exchanger — Select this setting to cause the server to accept mail for the domain and store it until a higher priority (lower number) mail server becomes available.

• Remote Mail Exchanger — Select this setting to cause the server to never accept mail for the domain.

  Note:

  The system always assigns the lowest priority value to Remote Mail Exchanger mail servers.

   

MX Entries

You can configure the following values for each MX entry:

• TTL — This integer value specifies the time to live (TTL). TTL indicates how long a particular record remains in memory, in seconds, before it refreshes. This value defaults to 14400.

• Priority — This integer value represents the priority order of the mail server, in relation to other MX entries. The lower the Priority value, the higher the server’s priority. This value defaults to a value that is 10 higher than the highest existing MX entry’s priority.

  • The servers with the lowest Priority values act as the primary mail servers.

  • Servers with higher Priority values serve as secondary mail servers.

  • If multiple mail servers have the same Priority value, the system distributes mail at that Priority value to those servers randomly.

• MX Destination — Enter the name of the mail server (for example, ‘mail.example.com’).

Add and delete MX entry text boxes

To add a new MX entry text box, click Add Another MX Entry Field. A new row will appear.

To delete a row, click Delete next to that MX entry.