Mysteries of the SPF world.

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On Nov 8, 2004, at 3:00 PM, QuickDNS Talk wrote:

>> What do we need to do to update our DNS records with whatever is
>> needed to support SPF?
>
> Nothing.
>
>> We're not planning on implementing SPF ourselves,
>
> You should. You'll have trouble sending mail to some domains, such as
> Hotmail, without an SPF record for each domain name that sends mail.
> The list of other organizations that will look unfavorably on mail
> from a domain without an SPF record is expected to grow.
>
> For more information, check the list archives, or go to
> <http://spf.pobox.com/> - the wizard in particular is useful.
>
>> but we want to be sure we have the right stuff in our DNS for folks
>> who do use it.
>
> SPF records are just TXT records with special formatting in the data
> field. You don't need to do anything to your DNS server to support
> SPF records used by other people.
>
> If you want your mail server to support SPF records, that's another
> story, and is way beyond this forum. Go to <http://spf.pobox.com/>
> for more information.

Chris,

We are still (happily) running 3.5.3. For our mail server, we have
several domains. The primarily MX for OurCompany.com is

ourcompany.com. MX mail.ourcompany.com.
ourcompany.com. A 123.456.789.122
mail.ourcompany.com. A 123.456.789.123

Other zones point to this MX for their mail:

company2.com. MX mail.ourcompany.com
mail.company2.com. A 123.456.789.123

According to the above website/s wizard, we would add a record:

mail.ourcompany.com. TXT "v=spf1 a ptr a:mail.company2.com ~all"

to the zone table for ourcompany.com if these were the only two domains
served by the mail server, or optionally either:

mail.ourcompany.com. TXT "v=spf1 a ptr a:mail.company2.com ?all"

or

mail.ourcompany.com. TXT "v=spf1 a ptr ?all"

if there were additional domains hosted that used an MX record to point
POP or SMTP traffic to mail.ourcompany.com, the ?all part of the data
entry of the TXT would cover them.

Do I understand this correctly or am I way off?

paul

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