Exchange 2003 won't receive emails from the internet, please help!!!!?

[Mushca]

I'm running Small Biz Server 2003 w/Exchange 2003 at home. It's really just for practise/learning use.

I can send emails from a client's Outlook 2007 inside the domain AND outside the domain successfully.

However, I can't email any of my users from OUTSIDE my domain.

If I send an email from my cox.net address and send it to [email protected], user1 doesn't get the email. And, the cox.net address does NOT get an undeliverable. (It did get an undeliverable prior to me figuring out that I had to set up the MX record, which now makes sense to me.) It's almost as if the email is out in limbo somewhere......??

I bought my domain from mydomain.com and I set up my MX record there. I used servername.mydomain.com for the MX record. This is correct, right?

Also, on Exchange, I have the smtp connector configured to, "Forward all mail through this connector to the following smart hosts" (smtp.east.cox.net)

And finally, I have the properties of the POP3 connector Manager configured as follows:
Email server: ns1.mydomain.com <---per www.mydomain.com's Web site....I think this is the correct entry that I am to put here, right??
Port: 110
User name: user1
password: ^^^^*****
confirm password" *******
Mailbox type: User Mailbox
Exchange Mailbox: User1

Why won't Exchange recieve emails?!?! Please if someone can help me I'll be soooooooo happy. I'm so lost and it's driving me nuts........

Thanks!

 

[LBCentaur]

All of your server settings look correct. For your Outlook client, you should use IMAP instead of POP. POP will download messages off the server and then delete them. If you POP client gets messed up, you will not see that message again.

Here's a test you can try:

From a computer at a friend's house or at work, see if you can connect to your Exchange server from a Windows XP computer:

Open a CMD window
TELNET servername.yourdomain.com 25

You should get an answer from your server. If not, further troubleshooting will be necessary. Just type quit to escape from the connection. Unfortunately, Windows Vista does not have a telnet client and you would have to download one.

Here's another thing to check. Again, from a CMD window at work (Vista or XP):

NSLOOKUP servername.domainname.com

This will fail if your domain name provider did not create a DNS entry for your servername.domainname.com host.