Exchange 2003, SMTP and BT

hi,

If  you have a look on your send connector, it will tell you how it's routing. If it's set to route to an IP address, then that Ip address will be your ISP (BT). If it's set to use DNS, then it will be the SBS  box doing the oubound sending.
Does this make sense?
Steve

Launch ESM & go to the properties of your send connector. Take the General tab and see which one is selected.

1. Use DNS, which means that exchnage sends emails straight.

2. Forward to smarthost - that would mean that all emails are relayed through another company or server.

Not quite sure if I am looking in the correct palce.  I have opened the Exchange System Manager and then opened the server name, protocols, SMTP and am looking at the default SMTP virtual server properties.  There I have a local IP address on the same range as the BT modem.  

Wrong place.

Go to ESM -> Administrative group -> groupname -> routing group ->name -> connectors -> your connector -> properties.

Sorry i'm still lost.  

I am in Exchange System Manager and the 1st tree view gives me Global Settings, Receipients, Servers, connectors, Tools and Folders.

I have now found the Admin Group it was not visible be default I have to right click on the top level contianer (in Exchange Server Manager), select properties and in the admin view box click Display Routing Group and Display Admin Group).  However after following the instructions the only connector I find is POP3.  

As this is SBS you shouldn't be touching ESM. Run the Configure Internet and Email wizard, that will ask you how you want to relay email. You can then choose DNS or Smart host. If you choose smart host you can then enter the BT server address.

However if you have a static IP address from BT then it is possible to set it up so that you can route email directly by DNS delivery rather than through their servers. You will need to ask BT to set a reverse DNS entry on to your IP address, which needs to match the same host name that is currently being used for your MX records for inbound email (so mail.example.com).

Simon.

I have inherited a server with no instruction as to how it is running and am trying to understand how it is configured.  I have discovered that it has a static IP address, fully qualified domain name, and forward and reverse DNS lookup is working.  All incoming emails are being collected via a pop3 connector.  

Thus I can conclude that all emails are being routed outbound via DNS rather than a smarthost.  One question around DNS - how does the server know where to find the BT DNS server?  

Thanks for that, I have run through the wizard and confirmed the presence of the settings for the ISP DNS server.  

Am I correct in assuming that they do not retain or filter any of the traffic from my server.  Do they run spam checks etc?

Thanks for the comments.