Technical Library

Domain Name System

Introduction

Integration

There are different types of name server queries, but one of the most frequently used queries occurs when you try to send a mail message.

A user in the your-domain.com domain wants to send a mail message to a person in the albany.edu domain. The first thing that happens is the mailer at your-domain.com issues a query to find the MX records for the albany.edu domain.

If the query returns no response or an error, the message will be returned.

The correct response is a list of MX records for the requested domain.

If the list of MX records returned is empty, the mailer will assume that there is an MX record, with the preference of 0, for the host albany.edu.

If the list is not empty, the mail will check to see if the listed MX record will support the type of mail service requested.

The mailer will then try to deliver the message to the MX records in order of preference.