General ? on Exch 2000 behind router doing NAT

[mhein50]

Hi,
I'm trying to help a colleague who has set up W2K & EX2000 and has asked me to step into the "mess" and fix things. He has a web site for his company hosted externally. All e-mail goes there. He has EX2000 server behind a router doing NAT and his ISP does DHCP on the router's address. (Using DSL.) He insists that he should be able to have EX2000 go out to his web site, grab all the company mail, bring it back in and sort it out to all respective mailboxes. All internal addressing is private IP range. He has no fixed IP address except the one at his externally-hosted web site. I'm telling him he can't do it; he's oversimplifying and misunderstanding the role of Exchange 2000. I know my so-called question is vague, but can someone give me advice on what to tell this guy. He's got his mixed-mode W2K network and EX2000 in such a mess and I want to tear it down and rebuild it.

Respectfully,

Malcolm Hein

 

[Zelandakh]

Depending on how his ISP does his mail, it may be possible. The ISP needs to be running an SMTP server which should have a forwarder running that points the mail at his server. If his server is unavailable the ISP holds the mail until it is up again.

This is a fairly standard practice.