XCON: Route Messages to Users on Different SMTP Hosts

This article describes how Exchange 2000 routes messages to users on different Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ( SMTP) hosts that have the same domain name as the Exchange 2000 server.

Exchange 2000 does not externally route messages to users on different SMTP hosts if the domain name is considered local. The local domain is determined by the SMTP addresses that are set in the default recipient policy.

You can create or use an additional recipient policy to set the primary SMTP address of specific users. The additional recipient policy should be set at a higher priority than the default policy. The default policy must be set to the lowest priority and is not invoked if the additional policy filter includes the same users.

NOTE: Click to clear the This Exchange Organization is responsible for all mail delivery to this address check box on the new recipient policy, which makes it non-authoritative.

For example, User1@example.com wants to send a message to User2@example.com. User1 resides on an Exchange 2000 server, and User2 resides on a Unix host. Recipient policy 1 has example.com as the primary address, which makes the address non-authoritative. The default recipient policy has exchange.example.com as the primary address and has example.com as a secondary proxy address. This policy sets the reply address of the local users to example.com, but it also permits local users to send messages to other users at example.com who reside on other mail hosts.

The highest priority recipient policy should contain all e-mail proxy addresses that all users require. Additional policies should be created to add specific addresses to specific users. Higher priority policies take precedence over any lower priority policies that contain filters for the same users. Messages are forwarded to a smarthost if the mail exchanger (MX) record in DNS points to an Exchange 2000 server.