Knowledgebase
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What is an MX record?
Posted by admin on 11 September 2009 09:36 PM
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When a remote site on the internet wants to send someone at your domain an e-mail message, their mail server software looks up the hostname of the appropriate mail server to receive that mail. This type of record is referred to as an "MX," "Mail Exchanger" or "Mail Relay" record. The response that the remote server gets tells it where to send the mail so that it will be relayed to you. When your site has received e-mail it is stored for you by your e-mail server. In order to retrieve your mail from the server you need to use an interface between your mail program and the mail server itself. This interface is usually a piece of software like POP (the Post Office Protocol) or IMAP. The hostname that you use to access the POP or IMAP server might be the same as your MX record, or it might be different. MX records are used to direct mail to specific locations. For example, if you had two hosts that work as mailhosts, you could identify them with MX records. More often, you create an MX record to tell others outside your domain (i.e. on the Internet) how to get mail to you. | |
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