What is mx mail server

MX (Mail eXchanger) is a type of DNS (Domain Name System) record that specifies the mail server responsible for accepting and processing email messages on behalf of a domain name. In other words, it's a way to tell the world which mail server is responsible for handling email for a particular domain.

When you send an email to a recipient with a specific domain name (e.g., [email protected]), the sending mail server looks up the MX record for that domain in the DNS database. The MX record points to the mail server that is responsible for accepting and processing email for that domain.

Here's an example of an MX record:

example.com. IN MX 10 mail.example.com.

In this example:

• example.com is the domain name
• IN specifies that this is an Internet-class MX record
• MX specifies that this is a mail exchanger record
• 10 is the priority value, which determines the order in which mail servers are tried (lower values are tried first)
• mail.example.com is the hostname of the mail server responsible for accepting and processing email for the example.com domain

When a mail server looks up the MX record for example.com, it will find this record and use the mail.example.com hostname to send the email to the mail server responsible for handling email for that domain.

MX records are an essential part of the email delivery process, as they allow mail servers to route email messages to the correct mail server for a particular domain. Without MX records, email delivery would be much more complicated and unreliable.

Some common types of MX records include:

• Primary MX record: specifies the mail server responsible for accepting and processing email for a domain
• Secondary MX record: specifies a backup mail server that can accept and process email if the primary mail server is unavailable
• MX record with a high priority value: specifies a mail server that should be tried only if the primary mail server is unavailable