Look up the names of the MX records in DNS to get their IP addresses.Query the name servers for the MX records.

Look up the authoritative name servers for.The sending mail server will look up the MX record in DNS by following a sequence along these lines: So if that is how a simple web browser connection is made, what about when somebody sends email to an address?Īgain DNS comes into play, but this time the look up is slightly different. The most important role of DNS for the majority of us is translating names into IP addresses so that network communications can occur.įor example, when you type into your web browser, DNS is used to look up that name to determine the IP address of the server to connect to. An MX record is a type of DNS record, so any understanding of MX records has to begin with an understanding of the fundamentals of the Domain Name System (DNS). I do find a lot of IT administrators looking after Exchange servers who don’t really understand what an MX record is and how they work. One of the less well understood components of a working email system is the MX record.

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