5.1 MX Records

DNS uses a single type of resource record to implement enhanced mail routing, the MX record. Originally, the MX record's function was split between two records, the MD (mail destination) and MF (mail forwarder) records. MD specified the final destination to which a message addressed to a given domain name should be delivered. MF specified a host that would forward mail on to the eventual destination, should that destination be unreachable.

Early experience with DNS on the Internet showed that separating the functions didn't work very well. A mailer needed both the MD and MF records attached to a domain name (if both existed) to decide where to send mail—one or the other alone wouldn't do. But an explicit lookup of one type or another (either MD or MF) would cause a name server to cache just that record type. So mailers either had to do two queries, one for MD and one for MF records, or they could no longer accept cached answers. This meant that the overhead of running mail was higher than that of running other services, which was eventually deemed unacceptable.

The two records were integrated into a single record type, MX, to solve this problem. Now a mailer just needed all the MX records for a particular domain name destination to make a mail-routing decision. Using cached MX records was fine, as long as the TTLs matched.

MX records specify a mail exchanger for a domain name: a host that will either process or forward mail for the domain name (through a firewall, for example). "Processing" the mail means either delivering it to the individual to whom it's addressed or gatewaying it to another mail transport, such as X.400. "Forwarding" means sending it to its final destination or to another mail exchanger "closer" to the destination via SMTP, the Internet's Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Sometimes forwarding the mail involves queuing it for some amount of time, too.

In order to prevent mail routing loops, the MX record has an extra parameter, besides the domain name of the mail exchanger: a preference value. The preference value is an unsigned 16-bit number (between 0 and 65535) that indicates the mail exchanger's priority. For example, the MX record:

peets.mpk.ca.us.    IN    MX    10 relay.hp.com.

specifies that relay.hp.com is a mail exchanger for peets.mpk.ca.us at preference value 10.

Taken together, the preference values of a destination's mail exchangers determine the order in which a mailer should use them. The preference value itself isn't important, only its relationship to the values of other mail exchangers. Is it higher or lower than the values of this destination's other mail exchangers? Unless other records are involved, this:

plange.puntacana.dr.  IN  MX  1 listo.puntacana.dr.
plange.puntacana.dr.  IN  MX  2 hep.puntacana.dr.

does exactly the same thing as:

plange.puntacana.dr.  IN  MX  50  listo.puntacana.dr.
plange.puntacana.dr.  IN  MX  100 hep.puntacana.dr.

Mailers should attempt delivery to the mail exchangers with the lowest preference values first. This may seem a little counterintuitive—the most preferred mail exchanger has the lowest preference value. But since the preference value is an unsigned quantity, this lets you specify a "best" mail exchanger at preference value 0.

If delivery to the most-preferred mail exchanger(s) fails, mailers should attempt delivery to less-preferred mail exchangers (those with higher preference values), in order of increasing preference value. That is, mailers should try more-preferred mail exchangers before they try less-preferred mail exchangers. More than one mail exchanger may share the same preference value, too. This gives the mailer its choice of which to send to first. The mailer must try all the mail exchangers at a given preference value before proceeding to the next higher value, though.

For example, the MX records for oreilly.com might be:

oreilly.com.    IN    MX    0 ora.oreilly.com.
oreilly.com.    IN    MX    10 ruby.oreilly.com.
oreilly.com.    IN    MX    10 opal.oreilly.com.

Interpreted together, these MX records instruct mailers to attempt delivery to oreilly.com by sending to:

Of course, once the mailer successfully delivers the mail to one of oreilly.com's mail exchangers, it can stop. A mailer successfully delivering oreilly.com mail to ora.oreilly.com doesn't need to try ruby.oreilly.com or opal.oreilly.com.

Note that oreilly.com isn't a particular host; it's the domain name of O'Reilly & Associates' main forward-mapping zone. O'Reilly & Associates uses the domain name as the email destination for everyone who works there. It's much easier for correspondents to remember the single email destination oreilly.com than to remember which host—ruby.oreilly.com? amber.oreilly.com?—each employee has an email account on.

This requires, of course, that the administrator of the mailer on ora.oreilly.com maintain a file of aliases for all email users at O'Reilly, forwarding their mail to the hosts on which they read it, or run a server that offers users remote access to their mail stores, such as a POP or IMAP server. What if a destination doesn't have any MX records, but has one or more A records? Will a mailer simply not deliver mail to that destination? Well, it depends on the mail server. Both Microsoft Exchange and the SMTP servers provided with Windows Server 2003 require the presence of a valid MX record for any domain name to which you want to deliver mail. However, Sendmail, a popular mail transport agent from the Unix world, is different. Recent versions of Sendmail can be compiled to deliver mail to a destination with no MX records but at least one A record. Most vendors have compiled their Sendmails this way. Sendmail Version 8, compiled "out of the box," will try the address of a mail destination without MX records. Check your vendor's documentation if you're not sure whether your mail server will send mail to destinations with only address records.

Even though nearly all mailers will deliver mail to a destination with just an address record and no MX records, it's still a good idea to have at least one MX record for each legitimate mail destination. Most mailers, including Sendmail, will always look up the MX records for a destination first when there is mail to deliver. If the destination doesn't have any MX records, a name server—usually one of your authoritative name servers—still must answer that query, and then Sendmail will go on to look up A records. That takes extra time, slows mail delivery, and adds a little load to your zone's authoritative name servers. If you simply add an MX record for each mail destination pointing to a domain name that maps to the same address that an address lookup would return, the mailer will have to send only one query, and the mailer's local name server will cache the MX record for future use.