Just a side comment on this.  My ISP doesn't provide static IP addresses for consumer accounts.  One needs a more expensive business account with the ISP to have this functionality.  However, this has never caused me a problem.  I am using an application that tracks the dynamic IP address (which rarely changes anyway) and causes DNS to be updated accordingly.  There are various applications that can provide this IP tracking function (I use DirectUpdate).

Also, because of the dynamic IP address limitation, my ISP doesn't offer the ability to choose DNS records.  However, as  I have my own domain, my Domain Name Registrar does allow me to edit DNS records, e.g. for type MX.  Other companies offer "advanced DNS services" (and some are free) even if your Domain Name Registrar does not.

Gordon

Hi,

   I'm having an issue with my ISP who says my copy of Mercury is identifying itself wrongly. I have mercury relaying mail to my ISP but the e-mails it is handling are of the form fred@isp.net where the ISP is isp.net. So I tell mercury that it's domain is isp.net. However when it connects to the ISP mail server it identifies itself as mailhost@isp.net and this is where my ISP gets upset. They tell me that they are isp.net and I can't use that name. I assume that the field in mercury where this is set up (in the SMTP relay unit) is used to decide what's local to it. i.e. if I change this to something else (for example otherisp.net) then either it's going to start sending out mails with @otherisp.net as their addresses or even worse refuse to send mails from pegasus identified as @isp.net because it's not local.

So what I'm asking is "Is there a way of separating these uses of the domain name assigned in the SMTP relay client or am I barking up the wrong tree and I can change this value without breaking anything"

All help is much appreciated.

> So what I'm asking is "Is there a way of separating these uses of the

domain name assigned in the SMTP
> relay client or am I barking up the

wrong tree and I can change this value without breaking anything"

You are not ISP.NET so you should not use that in the Configuration |  Mercury core "Internet name for this system" or a local domain.  You should change this to something like mercury.isp.net or [<your IP address>] in the name of the system and in the domains.  If you are receiving mail as user@isp.net using MercuryD then use an alias to point user@isp.net to user@mercury.isp.net or user@[<your IP address>]

You can also set MercuryC  Announce myself as [<your IP address>] to solve the immediate problem.From the MercuryD help:

Announce myself as

The SMTP protocol has an identification phase, during which the client will tell the server its name. MercuryC will usually tell the server the name defined under Internet name for this system in the Mercury Core configuration dialog, but on rare cases you may need it to use a different name. If this is the case, enter that name here, otherwise leave this field blank. This option is inherently quite technical and you should enter a value here only if you are sure of what you are doing.

If the ISP have provided you with a fixed IP address they will probably also give you the opportunity to choose the A record and MX record (Google for these if you don't know what they mean), so that you can give your server an official identity. To avoid getting your mail bounced by some servers you'll need the domain name to match your IP (search for rDNS). Either buy a suitable domain name (cheap to do) or use something based on your username and ISP, eg, username.isp.com  

Chris