RFC 974 (rfc974) - Page 2 of 7


Mail routing and the domain system



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RFC 974                                                     January 1986
Mail Routing and the Domain System


What the Domain Servers Know

   The domain servers store information as a series of resource records
   (RRs), each of which contains a particular piece of information about
   a given domain name (which is usually, but not always, a host).  The
   simplest way to think of a RR is as a typed pair of datum, a domain
   name matched with relevant data, and stored with some additional type
   information to help systems determine when the RR is relevant.  For
   the purposes of message routing, the system stores RRs known as MX
   RRs. Each MX matches a domain name with two pieces of data, a
   preference value (an unsigned 16-bit integer), and the name of a
   host.  The preference number is used to indicate in what order the
   mailer should attempt deliver to the MX hosts, with the lowest
   numbered MX being the one to try first.  Multiple MXs with the same
   preference are permitted and have the same priority.

   In addition to mail information, the servers store certain other
   types of RR's which mailers may encounter or choose to use.  These
   are: the canonical name (CNAME) RR, which simply states that the
   domain name queried for is actually an alias for another domain name,
   which is the proper, or canonical, name; and the Well Known Service
   (WKS) RR, which stores information about network services (such as
   SMTP) a given domain name supports.

General Routing Guidelines

   Before delving into a detailed discussion of how mailers are expected
   to do mail routing, it would seem to make sense to give a brief
   overview of how this memo is approaching the problems that routing
   poses.

   The first major principle is derived from the definition of the
   preference field in MX records, and is intended to prevent mail
   looping.  If the mailer is on a host which is listed as an MX for the
   destination host, the mailer may only deliver to an MX which has a
   lower preference count than its own host.

   It is also possible to cause mail looping because routing information
   is out of date or incomplete.  Out of date information is only a
   problem when domain tables are changed.  The changes will not be
   known to all affected hosts until their resolver caches time out.
   There is no way to ensure that this will not happen short of
   requiring mailers and their resolvers to always send their queries to
   an authoritative server, and never use data stored in a cache.  This
   is an impractical solution, since eliminating resolver caching would
   make mailing inordinately expensive.  What is more, the out-of-date
   RR problem should not happen if, when a domain table is changed,


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