Can't receive any external e-mail , can't send some.

[boed]

I'm building my first Exchange 2003 on a standalone PDC in a test environment. The system can only effectively send and receive e-mail internally. I can send to some external e-mail addresses but if hotmail has junk mail filtering turned on I can only send if I put my address from the exchange server in the hotmail (web interface) safe list. I'm just sending out messages with the word test in the subject and body. I can send that same e-mail from my other address and it goes through fine.

I can't receive any external mail hotmail or a regular domain account. I don't get any error messages even when I try to track the message, it is like it is going somewhere but never making it through my exchange box.

I'm not sure where the issue is as I'm new to this part of exchange functions. I'll be glad to give more details. There are no warnings or errors in the event viewer log to say what the issue is.

I've never really used this e-mail address before because it is a test domain address so I shouldn't be on any spam address lists. I've checked, it isn't an open relay server.

 

[boed]

I tracked part of it down to the fact my server was blocking traffic but I couldn't figure out how or why it was blocking traffic.

I finally gave up and reformatted again. I noticed on reinstall this time, it asked me about installing firewall services so I said no. I'm not sure where to acccess those as opposed to the ones under network properties, nic, advanced (those are the ones I made sure were unchecked before reformatting along with group policy filtering properties)

 

[Silmeron]

First off, you won't receive e-mail from the Internet if you don't have an MX record for your domain in your DNS server that points to your mail server. If you don't have an MX record, ask your ISP to add an MX record that points to the public IP address of your mail server.

One possibly annoying thing, if you're testing this from home, some ISP's block port 25 which can cause massive headaches. Check with their technical department to get a firm answer if that's the case.

Something you can use for testing instead of sending test e-mail is to open up a command prompt and type:

telnet <<dest_server_name>> 25

In 'dest_server_name' type in the mail server you're trying to connect to. This will help you find out if you can successfully make a connection or not.

You can also test your own computer by typing:

telnet localhost 25

Once you publish your mail server onto the Internet, try connecting at another location by using that telnet command. That will tell you if your mail server is successfully able to process incoming mail.

Do you have any other systems connected to your private network connection? Are there any production servers or a firewall attached? If a firewall is attached, you'll need to open up port 25.

On your server itself, there are three spots that I know of that can cause problems with closed ports:

1) IPSec security policy.

2) TCP/IP Filtering in your NIC's TCP/IP Advanced properties. To check this, go to Local Area Connection->Properties->Internet Protocal (TCP/IP)->Properties->Advanced->Options tab->Optional Settings Properties. Make sure port 25 isn't listed here.

3) ICF - Internet Connection Firewall. Local Area Connection->Properties->Advanced tab. Make sure ICF checkbox is empty.

Good luck,
-S-

 

[boed]

Thanks for responding. I should have made it clear, after reformatting the system is working fine. The tips you gave are very good though -they will help out the next person.

I'm not sure I had looked at my IPSEC security policy. Is that under group policy editor?