I am new in MS Exchange and I have a problem. My company uses an i5 running AS/400 for most of the work here. I have 2 2k3 servers and for email 1 Exchange 2k3 server. Most of the email sent out from the i5 does go through the Exchange server and gets delivered with no problem. However, there are a few companies that do not/will not recognize out outgoing email of which MSN and Hotmail are 2 of them. This is only the outgoing email from the i5 to those few. The rest of the company's email works fine, both in and out. BeforeI started at this company, they had set up a relay pc and connectors in exchangefor those few companies to get all outgoing email delivered. Now my boss wants me tofix it so that the connectors and relay pc can be removed. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated. I will do my best to answer any question that will help me fix this. Thanks again.

When you say that some companies like MSN and Hotmail do not recognize your outgoing mail, do you mean they reject it? Or that receive the e-mail but cannot read it?

From what I was told it is rejected, as in the recipients do not receive the email from us.

Does the e-mail leave your organization from a valid sender's SMTP address? If so, if the message is rejected than an NDR should be kicked back to that person's mailbox? Can you get a copy of the NDR?

I doubt it, the company "fixed" it before they brought me on. From what I've been told, all email on the "Windows" side functions properly. Email from the "AS/400" side works properly for ~97%. Only 4 sites reject our outgoing email. MSN, Hotmail, AOL, & Yahoo. Incoming is fine, no problem, just the outgoing to those 4.

Can you find out what one of those "from" addresses is and then assign it as one of your SMTP addresses. That way the NDR's will be kicked back to you (if it is not assigned to another mailbox already).

As I understand it, it's "From" us to a hotmail, yahoo, msn, or AOL user. It's only our outgoing email to those 4 that have any problem. Or amI misunderstanding your question, Jim?

Let me elaborate a bit. Your AS/400 application is creating an e-mail that is going to Snuffy@aol.com and it is from SpecialApplication@yourcompany.com When AOL rejects it, they send the NDR message back to SpecialApplication@yourcompany.com. You need to capture that NDR message. That is why I said you should put it on mailboxas one of the valid addresses. So, you need to find out what the From address is for these messages that are being sent from your AS/400. And, of course, it should be a valid SMTP address. Some organizations will not accept e-mail if the reply address is invalid.

Correct. But as they "fixed" the problem with connectors, no one has and of the NDR msgs since beforeI started here. It is a valid SMTP address. I'm told that there never was any problem on the windows side of the company. The "other" side is running AS/400 via win2k O/S. When they send out a msg, it goes from their PC to the i5 the the Exchange server and on out. Note: Sorry it took so long to get back on this, I'm trying to bring this place up to the 21st century.

I have seen a lot of email rejected from providers such as AOL when they are performing SPAM checks. The most common check that can cause mail issues is when they perform reverse DNS checks on the IP address that the mail is being received from and then check is this reverse DNS entry matches the FQDN name that the mail server is using on the connector. In your case if this was the issue if should also fail for other users that are sending through the same connector, but it could be a similar check that is being performed. Can you send yourself an email to another external mail account from both accounts that do and do not give you problems and check the mail headers to check if there is any differences. It could be something else in the header causing the mail to be considered spam. Cheers, Rhys