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Each E-mail address consists of two strings: a domain name and a local part. Usually, an address looks like xxxx@yyyyy, where yyyyy is the domain name (the unique name of the recipient mail system) and xxxx is the local part, i.e. a user name or an account name in that system.
When the Router parses an address, it extracts the name of the system the message should be delivered to. It becomes the domain name part of the address. The rest of the address is placed into the local part, i.e. the local part defines the recipient when the message is delivered to the system specified with the domain name. In the examples above, the domain name part is zzzz, while the local part is xxxx@yyyyy.
See the RFC822 and related documents for details on E-mail address formats.
Note: if the local part contains a complex address (i.e. it also contains domain name(s) and a local part), the local part is presented in the '%' notation: local%domain1%domain2. This information can be used for sophisticated foreign aliasing methods.
E-mail address | local part | domain part |
---|---|---|
support@stalker.com | support | stalker.com |
-- routed --> | support | |
<@stalker.com:sales@gamma.com> | sales@gamma.com | stalker.com |
-- routed --> | sales@gamma.com | |
-- routed --> | sales | gamma.com |
For example, your server (mycompany.com) may act as an Internet-uucp relay for the client uucp systems client1, client2, and client3. Each client has its own domain name (client1.com, client2.com, and client3.com), and you have configured your Router to ensure that all messages sent to the client1.com domain will be routed to the uucp host client1, etc. But you should also ensure that when a message is sent to the client1.com domain, that message is routed to your server (mycompany.com).
Internet mail routing is controlled with the DNS - Domain Name System. Domain Name Servers contain the information about each domain name. So, when the client registers the client1.com domain name, the client should ask to create an MX (mail exchange) DNS record pointing to your domain - mycompany.com.
You can use a Web browser to modify the Routing Table. The table is stored as a plain text file in the CommuniGate Settings subfolder.
Here is a sample Routing Table:
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Each line in the Routing Table is a routing record. A routing record contains the left part, the equals sign (=) and the right part. The semicolon sign (;) can be used to place a comment after the right part of a routing record. A comment line can be added to the Table by inserting a line starting with the semicolon sign.
The Router takes a parsed E-mail address (i.e. the domain and local parts of the address) and uses the Table, scanning its records from top to bottom. If an applicable record is found, it is applied as described below and the modified local and/or domain parts are processed with the Router from the beginning.
Any Routing record can contain the Relay: prefix (can be shorten to R:), the NoRelay: prefix (can be shorten to N:) or the RelayAll: prefix. See the Protection section for the details. If no prefix is specified, the Relay: prefix is assumed.
server1 = server1.myorg.org server2 = server2.myorg.org server3 = server3.myorg.org
If you have many servers in your myorg.org "upper level" domain, it becomes impossible to provide Router Table records for all of them. In this case you may want to enable the Add myorg.org to Non-Qualified Domain Names option. If this option is enabled, and an E-mail address cannot be routed using CommuniGate Pro Router Table and Modules, and the domain part of the address does not contain a dot symbol, the specified string (myorg.org) is added to the address domain name (separated with the dot symbol). The address user@someserver will be converted to the user@someserver.myorg.org address and the Router will try to route this new, corrected address.
It is a very bad practice to use non-qualified domain names in E-mail addresses. Enable this option only if you can not enforce a policy that requires your users to specify correct, fully-qualified domain names in E-mail addresses.
When some address is being processed and the domain name matches a domain name specified in such a record, the domain part is substituted with the right part of the routing record.
A routing path can specify relays.
If mail to several domains should be routed in the same or similar way, you may use the asterisk sign as the wild-card symbol.
Very often this type of routing is used to process all subdomains of the server's own domain.
The asterisk symbol can be used in the right path, in this case it is substituted with the symbols matching the wildcard symbol in the left part.
In most cases, the wildcard symbol is the first symbol in the domain name, but it is allowed to be used anywhere:
Only one wildcard symbol is allowed in one routing record.
Besides domain-level routing records, routing for domains can be specified using Foreign Aliasing records (see below). Records for Unified Domain-Wide Accounts are domain-level routing records, too.
This database should contain at least two fields: sample and mapto.
If Router finds a record that contains the domain part string in the sample field, it changes the domain name part to the string stored in the mapto field.
This database is used to keep the aliases information for local domains, and it is automatically updated when aliases are created, removed, or renamed, and when the real domain name is modified. But you can add any records to that database, including records for external domains.
The difference between a Router domain-level record and a DomainAliases database record is in wildcard processing: wildcard symbols are processed in the Routing Table records only.
If the left part of a routing record contains an account name in the angle brackets (< and >), the record specifies local aliasing.
When the Router detects that the domain name is an empty string, it scans all the alias records in the Table. When an alias record for the local part of the address being processed is found, the right part of the routing record is used as the new address. The Router restarts from the beginning, parsing and processing this new address.
In the all examples below mycompany.com is the Server own domain name.
Note: if there is an alias for the local name xxxx, there is no need to actually register the real xxxx account with the Server. Additionally, that real account would be useless, since no message will ever be stored in that account: everything directed to the xxxx name is routed elsewhere.
The right side of an alias record can be any E-mail address.
You can use the asterisk (*) sign in the alias records as a wildcard symbol.
In most cases you do not have to use Router Alias Records: if you need to provide an alternative name for an account in the main domain, use Account Aliases instead. If you need to re-route all mail sent to some name in the main domain to some external address, use Forwarders instead.
When no Alias Record for the given name is found in the Table, the local part string is considered to be a name of an account, group, or a mailing list on your Server. These addresses (with an empty domain name) are processed with the Local delivery and LIST modules.
Sometimes it is necessary to create an alias for a specific account on a foreign system. For example, all mail sent to some domain should be routed to a specific mail host or to a unified account, but certain accounts in that domain should be routed to accounts on your or other systems.
Foreign Alias records contains a full name in the angle brackets and the Router scans them when it processes any address (not only the addresses with an empty domain name part).
The wildcard symbol (*) can be used only in the local part of the full account name (i.e. it can be used before the @ sign).
You can use the wild-card feature to host several domains on your mail server, creating a unique "address space" for each domain.
In many cases you do not have to use Router Alias Records: if you need to provide an alternative name for an account in a secondary domain, use Account Aliases instead. If you need to re-route all mail sent to some name in a secondary domain to some external address, use Forwarders instead. Use Foreign Alias is you need the wildcard functionality and/or you need to reroute an address which is not in one of the domains served with your CommuniGate Pro Server.
If the domain name part of an address is ERROR, or if the domain name part is empty, and the local name part is ERROR, the address is rejected without processing, generating the "Blacklisted Address" error report.
If the domain name part of an address is BlackListed, or if the domain name part is empty, and the local name part is BlackListed , the address is rejected without processing, generating the "Blacklisted Address" error report. See the SMTP module description for the details.
If the domain name part is empty, and the local name part is spamtrap, routing stops. Addresses of that type are rejected as the ERROR addresses, but the SMTP module processes them in a special manner. See the Protection section for the details.
If the domain name part ends with the symbols .here, this suffix is removed, and the remaining part of the domain name is used as the name of a local CommuniGate Pro domain. This suffix allows to avoid routing loops in certain situations.
For IP addresses enclosed in square brackets, the Router checks if the IP address is a dedicated IP address of some secondary domain. If a secondary domain is found, the IP address is substituted with that domain name. If the IP address is the IP address of the server main domain, an empty string is placed into the domain name part, and the Router makes the next iteration after parsing the local name part of the address.
Each module looks at the address passed and can:
If a module has modified an address, the Router makes a new iteration, repeating all steps for the new, modified address.
If the Router is called from the Message Enqueuer component, and a module has accepted an address, the message is enqueued to this module for delivery.
Each module is called twice. First, the Router calls each module asking to process "obvious" addresses. On this call the modules process only the addresses that are definitely directed to that module: the SMTP module processes addresses with the domain part ending with .smtp, the UUCP module processes addresses with the domain part ending with .uucp, the LIST module processes the addresses of the created mailing lists, etc.
If all modules have ignored an address, the Router calls each module again, asking for a "final" attempt. On that stage, the Local Delivery module processes all addresses directed to local domains, the SMTP module processes all addresses with domain names that have at least one dot, etc.
This two-step method allows several modules to correctly process E-mail addresses without relying to a particular module call order. If each module would process an address in one step, listname@domainname addresses (that look like Local account addresses), would be rejected with the Local Delivery module if it is called before the LIST module, user@uucphost.uucp addresses would be taken with the SMTP module instead of the UUCP module, etc.
See the module descriptions for details.
When the server is first installed, the following records are placed into the Routing Table: