Lukas Beeler's IT Blog

DNS is often overlooked by novices – it doesn’t look to complicated, but in the end it is the glue that holds the internet together.

I’ve written about DNS before (sorry, German only), but i still use all that knowledge i learned back then every day. DNS is important for Active Directory (which has a whole seperate page of possible issues), but it’s also very important for e-mail.

I’ve seen many smaller IT companies or hobbyists that host their own DNS (which is fine, it builds experience) – but usually without a secondary DNS server.

The problem is that without any DNS server responding for a domain, strange things happen. While it would be very clear by the standards that this is just a temporary failure, and the mail should be held in the queue, given the right combination of DNS resolver and MTA, mails may bounce.

There are many companies offering secondary DNS services, but they’re usually not necessary – ask someone you know with a static IP address, and play secondary for him. Or if you really want your own infrastructure, rent a server in Germany, which is pretty inexpensive and gives you a secondary MX and DNS server.