Mail destined for Freeserve

Hello all,

I'm a bit thick when it comes to figuring out DNS, so please bear with me.
I've known for a while that Freeserve were taken over by Wanadoo, who were
then subsequently taken over by Orange. Or something along those lines.

A friend still has an email address that ends in freeserve.co.uk and
although they are slow in responding sometimes, mails do get through to them
ok.

Just out of curiosity, I thought I'd run the 'host' command against
freeserve.co.uk, expecting it to be an alias for orange.co.uk. But I was
wrong. I got no results at all from that command. I was just given a new
command prompt. Perhaps 'alias' is the wrong terminology, but it's all I can
think of.

My question to you all is, if (as it seems to me) there is no IP address
associated with freeserve.co.uk, how does my mail server know where to send
the mails to that domain ?

(If it helps, I'm on NTL, using Slackware Linux 11.)

Thanks for your time,

BH.

Re: Mail destined for Freeserve

This is a MIME GnuPG-signed message. If you see this text, it means that
your E-mail or Usenet software does not support MIME signed messages.
The Internet standard for MIME PGP messages, RFC 2015, was published in 1996.
To open this message correctly you will need to install E-mail or Usenet
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--=_mimegpg-commodore.email-scan.com-17724-1160925134-0001
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Benson Hedges writes:

> My question to you all is, if (as it seems to me) there is no IP address
> associated with freeserve.co.uk, how does my mail server know where to send
> the mails to that domain ?

A mail server does not send mail to a domain IP's address.

A mail server looks up MX records, and sends mail to the listed servers.

dig freeserve.co.uk mx

would show you the MX records for this domain. However I don't see any MX
records for this domain any more, so this domain no longer receives any
mail.


--=_mimegpg-commodore.email-scan.com-17724-1160925134-0001
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

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--=_mimegpg-commodore.email-scan.com-17724-1160925134-0001--

Re: Mail destined for Freeserve

On Sun, 15 Oct 2006, Benson Hedges wrote:

BH>
BH> Just out of curiosity, I thought I'd run the 'host' command against
BH> freeserve.co.uk, expecting it to be an alias for orange.co.uk. But I was
BH> wrong. I got no results at all from that command. I was just given a new
BH> command prompt. Perhaps 'alias' is the wrong terminology, but it's all I can
BH> think of.
BH>
BH> My question to you all is, if (as it seems to me) there is no IP address
BH> associated with freeserve.co.uk, how does my mail server know where to send
BH> the mails to that domain ?
BH>


There will be a subdomain that you are sending to.. My old freeserve
address no longer exists but taking a name at randon, say my firstname,
alan.freeserve.co.uk has an mx record

;; ANSWER SECTION:
alan.freeserve.co.uk. 14400 IN MX 2 mail-in.freeserve.com.



--
Alan

( If replying by mail, please note that all "sardines" are canned.
There is also a password autoresponder but, unless this a very
old message, a "tuna" will swim right through. )

Re: Mail destined for Freeserve

On 2006-10-15, Sam wrote:
>
> Benson Hedges writes:
>
>> My question to you all is, if (as it seems to me) there is no IP address
>> associated with freeserve.co.uk, how does my mail server know where to send
>> the mails to that domain ?
>
> A mail server does not send mail to a domain IP's address.
>
> A mail server looks up MX records, and sends mail to the listed servers.
>
> dig freeserve.co.uk mx
>
> would show you the MX records for this domain. However I don't see any MX
> records for this domain any more, so this domain no longer receives any
> mail.

Thanks to all who replied. I actually tried the dig command but missed the
'mx' part. Thanks for the tip.

Regards,

BH.