Questions regarding registering a domain

the DNS MX record for public domain name.com/net/org/info/ etc maps your public IP address to that name. Your firewall will have to allow port 25 [SMTP] traffic through. The internal DNS server MX record says host [machine hosting exchange is ip [private ip address]. In exchange management/connectors/SMTP connector properties/address space is where you put your address space with a metric routing weight. you'll see a connector scope that you specify a routing group or for the entire organization. On the SMTP Connector General properties page you have the choice of using DNS to route to the SMTP virtual Server on exchange.

I would rename the domain to your desired name in Active Directory, after which: Go to www.register.com and register your domain there. If the name you want is already taken, what about instead of domainname.com, you go with domainname.net, or an abbreviation for your company?

Then install exchange. Make sure you have your "MX" records pointed to your outside IP address and you have your router/firewall setup to allow SMTP(port 25) to pass to the correct server.

Hope this helps!

Do I only need to setup the smtp connector because the domain names are different? Why would someone use domain.local as opposed to internal.domain.com?

Ideally, you would want to change your AD domain name to match your public domain name, but changing your AD domain name, once it has been configured, is impossible without completely wiping out your entire domain and starting over, so you really don't want to do that. Although it is not that common, it is possible to have Exchange use email addresses that do not match your local domain name. The only thing you have to be sure about is that your authoritative DNS server for your domain (wherever that is - probably at your ISP) has both an A (host) and an MX record in your zone that points to the correct IP address and name for your email server. Then, on your router or firewall, you have to set up port forwarding for the SMTP port (port 25) to forward all incoming packets to the correct local server.

In Exchange, you then use the Recipient Policies to configure the default naming convention for the email addresses.

Example: let's say your internal domain name is domainname.local, and your public domain name is company.com; your router IP address is 5.5.5.5 (remember - this is just for arguments sake ;-)); you want your public email server name to be mail.company.com; and your internal Exchange server's name is Exchange.domainname.local with an IP address of 10.0.0.1. Here's how you would do this:

1. On the authoritative server for your domain, create (or have your ISP create) a host (A) record and an MX record for mail.company.com at 5.5.5.5 (your router's public IP).

2. In your Exchange recipient policy, set up the SMTP address to use (mailnickname)@company.com for all of your users.

3. On your router, forward all incoming traffic for port 25 to 10.0.0.1 (the internal address of the Exchange.domainname.local server).

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I disagree with synergy's suggestion to renaming your internal domain to a public extension.

nowadays, for security configuration, supposed experts suggests that you name your private domain with an extension other than those publically available and even not use the .local [because everyone knows that one]. ICANN has the authority over the roots such as .com .net etc. The .com IP to names can be resolved by public name servers which may or may not provide a hole into your private network if said private network uses the public DNS name [not to mention the fowarder issue in DNS which using an extenstion other than whats publically availble resolves]. A private network is only private in that it uses non routable ip addresses [which NAT overcomes] and a firewall [closed door]. If you did not have some form of a firewall [and use private IP addressing] your private network would only be a segment of your ISPs network [and in reality your public IP address is a host address on a segment]

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