Inside Mail vs. Outside Mail

[BBousman]

Hello, currently we are running version 6.5.6944.0 of Exchange. I've been with my company since October now and don't know a whole lot about Exchange. Currently, the way we do our mail is if we want to send inside mail to someone in the company, we have to set the account to mail from the Exchange Server, if we want to send mail to an outside e-mail address, we have to set the account to our POP3 account. I know there's a way where you can set it so you only need one account but the system was setup before I got here and I'm not familiar with exchange enough to mess with it. Does anyone know of any instructions on the proper way to set up an e-mail system so you only need one account for inside and outside mail or can anyone just tell me? Thanks.

 

[58sniper]

Assuming you have a truly static IP address, the best practices way would be to get rid of POP3 entirely.
Configure the firewall to forward ports 25 and 443 to the server.

Have the ISP configure the PTR for your public IP address. Something like "mail.domain.com"

Create a DNS "A" record (in your public DNS) for your public IP address. Something like "mail.domain.com". (be sure to use the same address you used above)

Make sure the Recipient Policy on your Exchange server is configured to use the correct domain name for your public domain, and that it's the default.

Change the MX record for your domain name to deliver mail directly to the "A" record created above. Mail will start coming directly to your server instead of sitting in a POP3 server.

Rip the POP3 config out of the clients. Doing so will cause the ACCOUNTS button to disappear.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt