User can't send e-mails to one specific domain

We are running Exchange 2000 SP3 on Small Business Server 2000. Windows 2000 is SP3. About a week ago, a user told me that he couldn't send messages to a certain address. He was trying to send a message to his personal e-mail address at the ix.netcom.com domain. I looked at the queue, and sure enough, it was in retry to the ix.netcom.com domain.

We are not having any trouble sending to any other domains, nor is he having trouble receiving messages at his personal e-mail account from people not on our domain. I tried sending several test messages, and I was successful in getting two to go through, but I have not figured out why some go through and some don't. Any suggestions?

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If you right-click the queue for this domain in Exchange System Manager and select "properties," you'll see the reason for message delivery failure listed toward the bottom of the dialog box. This will tell you why the mail has not been delivered. Some of the more common problems are DNS-related (e.g., "Unable to bind to destination server in DNS") and connection problems ("The remote server did not respond to the connection attempt").

Once you determine why the e-mail remains in the queue, you can then pursue the appropriate troubleshooting steps, such as using NSLookup to verify the MX records for ix.netcom.com. When I check those records from my location, I get the following:

ix.netcom.com MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mx04.earthlink.net
ix.netcom.com MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mx05.earthlink.net
ix.netcom.com MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mx06.earthlink.net
ix.netcom.com MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mx00.earthlink.net
ix.netcom.com MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mx01.earthlink.net
ix.netcom.com MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mx02.earthlink.net
ix.netcom.com MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mx03.earthlink.net
ix.netcom.com nameserver = itchy.mindspring.net
ix.netcom.com nameserver = scratchy.mindspring.net
mx04.earthlink.net internet address = 207.217.120.249
mx05.earthlink.net internet address = 207.217.120.31
mx06.earthlink.net internet address = 207.217.120.23
mx00.earthlink.net internet address = 207.217.120.28
mx01.earthlink.net internet address = 207.217.120.29
mx02.earthlink.net internet address = 207.217.120.79
mx03.earthlink.net internet address = 207.217.120.78
itchy.mindspring.net internet address = 207.69.200.210
scratchy.mindspring.net internet address = 207.69.200.211

Your NSLookup query results should match this.

This was first published in July 2003

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