The Computer Vet Weblog

I guess I didn’t change anything, but my ISP did. Or something happened. But, after searching through eighteen dozen websites, restarting the Exchange Server fifteen times, changing every setting a dozen times, and reinstalling the service pack twice, I found out what was happening with our mail server. For those of you familiar with Exchange 5.5, in the Internet Mail Service you have the choice of sending SMTP mail directly using DNS, or forwarding it to another SMTP server that will handle it for you. Ours was set to forward it to the SMTP server at our ISP. I’m not sure why, that’s just how they configured it when they installed it for us (our ISP was also our network consultant back when I needed hand holding). I seem to remember that I had tried the direct setting before, but it caused some kind of problem. So there it was, merrily forwarding all outgoing mail to our ISP for three years.

Today the “Relaying not allowed” messages started. Why? I don’t know. But sending the messages directly made things work again. And that’s what I’m all about—making things work. Understanding it can come later, if there’s time, but making it work is always tops. I changed the setting so mail goes out directly, and if that really did cause a problem in the past, I’ll deal with it when it comes up. And I’ll just sit here and scratch my head over why our ISP’s SMTP server got unhappy with us.

And now the weekend begins!