[BlueOnyx:03602] Re: Mail Bounces sometimes

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Darrell,

> Are you saying that you must never deviate from the MX record for
> company.com pointing to www.company.com, or if you have this minimum setup?
> If you have an A record mail.company.com, is it ok for the MX record for
> company.com to then point to mail.company.com?

The righthand side of any A or MX record should point to something that's 
exactly named as the site is named in the GUI.

If you want mail.company.com, too, and your site is named www.company.com in 
the GUI, then your DNS would look like this:

 company.com            ---- A Record ---->      <IP-Address>
 www.company.com         ---- A Record ---->     <IP-Address>
 mail.company.com         ---- A Record ---->     <IP-Address>
 company.com            ---- MX Record --->      www.company.com (*)
 www.company.com         ---- MX Record --->     www.company.com (*)
 mail.company.com         ---- MX Record --->     www.company.com (*)
 <IP-Address>           ---- Reverse ---->       company.com (***)

(*) = This MUST be the exact name (including the hostname part) of the domain 
as shown in the GUI interface.

> And the rule is only one reverse pointer per IP, otherwise it wouldn't
> work, correct?  

The IP of a mailserver should have a reverse record, correct. Otherwise emails 
sent from that mailserver may not get through SPAM-filtering setups on quite a 
few recipient mailservers.

> Do many network providers allow customers to set their own
> reverse records?  How would one know, without asking the provider?

Basically you'd have to ask your provider. Most don't bother with granting you 
reverse delegation authority, as that would force them to modify their DNS 
server to point to your DNS server for reverse records of your IPs. Instead 
most providers I dealt with so far typically have some GUI that allows you to 
set up reverse records for your own IPs. 

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber