Mail zones
A fundamental concept in the world of DNS!
In the Domain Name System (DNS), a mail zone is a top-level domain (TLD) that is specifically designed for email addresses. Mail zones are used to route email messages to their intended recipients.
Here's how it works:
- Mail zone: A mail zone is a TLD that is used to identify a domain name that is used for email addresses. For example,
example.com
is a mail zone. - MX records: Each mail zone has one or more Mail Exchanger (MX) records that specify the mail servers responsible for receiving email messages for that domain. For example,
mx1.example.com
andmx2.example.com
might be the MX records forexample.com
. - Email routing: When an email message is sent to a recipient with an email address in the
example.com
domain, the sending mail server looks up the MX records forexample.com
and sends the message to the mail server specified in the MX record. - Mail server: The mail server receives the email message and delivers it to the intended recipient's mailbox.
Some common mail zones include:
.com
(commercial organizations).org
(organizations).net
(networks).edu
(educational institutions).gov
(government agencies).mil
(military organizations)
Mail zones are an essential part of the email infrastructure, allowing email messages to be routed efficiently and reliably to their intended recipients.