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Old 28 Jul 2022, 05:16 AM   #1
InquiringMind
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Posts: 114
Can Someone Knowledgeable About Domains Translate For Us ???

Please translate this for us because we are newbies when it comes to domain issues:



Here is the question we asked the Domain Registrar:

Some email services like Fastmail.com have you set the nameserver 1 and nameserver 2 and then Fastmail.com sets all of the rest of the information for you. That seems to work with the way Accuwebhosting and Enom have the Domain controls laid out. Meaning, all that the access.enom.com control panel allows is for you to change the nameservers. [You have to set the default nameserver values to get access to anything else.]

But, other email services like theexwhyzee.com [forum will not accept correct spelling] want the user to set all of the mail server records [themselves]. theexwhyzee.com does not make any changes in the Domain. Please See this link:
https://www.theexwhyzee.com/account/...wn-Domain.html

So if we were to set the nameservers using access.enom.com then we would not be able to set the values for the MX Records, SPF Records, DKIM, and CNAME because we cannot edit those values unless we use the Default values for nameservers [this is specified on the control panel page]. So that is why we were asking if we can set the default values for nameservers first, then edit MX, SPF, DKIM, and CNAME, then go back and change the nameservers to the proper values. We do not think we can use WebsitePanel or SolidCP because we are using Windows 10 and are not running our own server.

So how do users [of your Domain service] change the MX, SPF, DKIM, CNAME, and nameserver values when using an [email] service like theexwhyzee.com that wants the user to do it all themself ???

Thank you.




Here is the reply we got:

Hello,

The current nameservers of your domain "___.com" are as follows.

ns1.___.com.
ns2.___.com.

You can verify it from the below URL.

https://intodns.com/___.com

It means where your current nameservers are pointing, you can manage your DNS zone from there, and any DNS record you have added will be affected.

If you use Enom's default nameservers, you will manage your DNS zone records like MX, SPF, DKIM, and CNAME from Enom, and any DNS records will be adequate from the Enom DNS zone.

And then, change the Enom's nameservers to any custom nameservers so the DNS records you have added to the Enom's DNS zone will not be affected.

In short, where your nameservers are pointing, you can manage your DNS zone from there.

Regards,




So I think what they are telling us is:

1. Change the nameservers to default values.
2. Edit the values for MX, SPF, DKIM, and CNAME.
3. Then go back and change the nameservers to the proper values.
The changing of the nameservers will not affect what we entered for MX, SPF, DKIM, and CNAME.

Do we correctly understand what the Domain Registrar replied ???



TIA

Last edited by InquiringMind : 28 Jul 2022 at 05:23 AM.
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Old 28 Jul 2022, 04:58 PM   #2
jarland
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Representative of:
MXRoute.com
That's going to be difficult to fully explain without fully explaining how DNS works. I'll try to keep it as short as I can, and attempt to answer.

You live in a house. Your house has an address. Your address is listed in a phone book. But there are competing phone books. Your phone company probably offers you access to one, but you don't have to use that one. You can have your address published in any phone book you want. But you also want people to know what phone book to find you in. So the city keeps a record of which phone book you are in. Inquiring minds go to the city and the city says "They're in the blue phone book." So inquiring minds obtain the blue phone book and then look up your address. Yay, they found you.

The city register is your parent TLD (.com, .net, .org, etc).

The phone book is your DNS system.

The inquiring mind is the server used by the person trying to send you an email.

When someone wants to find you, they go to your parent TLD (the city register). The parent TLD gives them your nameservers (the blue phone book). The inquiring mind looks up your DNS records at the nameservers (opens the blue phone book, finds the record, reads it).

The blue phone book contains all of your records. This is where you change your records when you need people to know what your new address is.

But you didn't have to choose the blue phonebook (your registrar's DNS). You could've chosen orange (Cloudflare). You could've chosen any number of them, some free and some not.

Nameservers are just places of records. They should let you set the records. The records you set can come from your own personal knowledge, from your web host, from your email host, etc. The people running the systems behind the records that you point to, they don't have to be your DNS host. They can merely give you records for you to publish at your DNS host.

The reason I don't give out nameservers is that it's quite an additional burden when there are already plenty of free and great options for people to use like Cloudflare, etc. To see what I mean, here's how I tell my customers to set up service using Cloudflare (which can be their nameservers, if they sign up there): https://mxroutedocs.com/dns/cloudflare/

But see, just because I gave them instructions for Cloudflare doesn't mean they have to use that. They could use the DNS from Google Domains, and then I'd give them this tutorial: https://mxroutedocs.com/dns/googledomains/

Quote:
1. Change the nameservers to default values.
2. Edit the values for MX, SPF, DKIM, and CNAME.
3. Then go back and change the nameservers to the proper values.
The changing of the nameservers will not affect what we entered for MX, SPF, DKIM, and CNAME.
Using my analogy above, this is what that would do:

1. Choose to publish my address in the blue phone book
2. Inform the blue phone book creators of what address to publish
3. Choose to publish my address in the red phone book

Every time you change your nameservers, you delegate your DNS to someone different. Notice that logic would have you telling people to look for your address in the red phone book after you only had it published in the blue one, which would nullify your work in the blue phone book. If you want to be published in the red phone book, you should make sure they have your address on file. Whoever your nameservers point to right now, that is who has to have the current records for your domain, anyone else you had previously set them to becomes irrelevant immediately.

I'm sorry if this was entirely too confusing. I could just tell you what to do but if I don't attempt to explain the underlying theory in an understandable way, it's not likely that just giving you an ordered list of steps will result in success (based on my experience with the matter and where similar questioning was used). It's entirely possible that my attempt to keep this short made it unreadable.

Last edited by jarland : 28 Jul 2022 at 05:12 PM.
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Old 29 Jul 2022, 02:24 AM   #3
placebo
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Quote:
Originally Posted by InquiringMind View Post
So I think what they are telling us is:

1. Change the nameservers to default values.
2. Edit the values for MX, SPF, DKIM, and CNAME.
3. Then go back and change the nameservers to the proper values.
The changing of the nameservers will not affect what we entered for MX, SPF, DKIM, and CNAME.

Do we correctly understand what the Domain Registrar replied?
No.

You have a choice of who provides DNS service for your domain. You can either use Fastmail or Enom.

The advantage of using Fastmail is that Fastmail sets up all of your mail-related records for you. You access the DNS records through the settings on your account, so only you can edit them. Enom's people can't. If there's a problem with them, Enom can't help.

If you use Enom's servers, you'll likely have to set up the records yourself. If there's a problem with your setup, however, Enom's people may be able to help you by editing and correcting any problematic records since they have access to their own servers.

They're asking you to set your domain to use Enom's servers, so they can edit your records for you. If you go this route, you'll want to keep using Enom's servers.
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Old 29 Jul 2022, 05:38 AM   #4
InquiringMind
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Let me re-state my question to help me understand the replies.

I used Accuwebhosting as the Domain Name Registrar.

Accuwebhosting is a reseller for Enom.

Enom provides a limited access control panel for customers of Accuwebhosting to use.

This limited control panel allows me to either choose the Enom default name servers or specify others.

If you use the default nameservers, you are granted access to change mail server related records. If you specify any other name servers, the access to change mail server related records is blocked.

I chose to use Fastmail. Fastmail asks you to use its nameservers and then they change all of the related mailserver information in the records for you. You do not have to make any of those changes yourself.

BUT... Fastmail seems to be having problems lately. I hope they correct them; however if they do not, I will have to move my accounts and my family member's account which has its own domain.

So say that I wanted to use the ex why zee dot com for mail service for the account that uses its own domain.

The ex why zee dot com wants the user to enter all of the mail information. See below:

With the ex why zee Webmail you can have email hosted with your own domain name as long as long as you have registered the domain, the domain does not need to be registered with us to host email with a custom domain. If the domain is not registered through the ex why zee, you will need to edit your DNS records as per the guide below to enable domain-based email. These directions are the same for all email accounts hosted with us: the ex why zee Webmail, MobileSync, and Microsoft Exchange accounts (except Office 365). They are required when you create an email with your own domain name to send mail and access your email...
... The domain does not need to be registered or transferred to the ex why zee to use our email service. We support all domain registrars on our hosted email environment.

1. Edit MX Records (required)
...
2. Add An SPF Record (recommended)
...
3. Enable DKIM Authentication (recommended)
...
4. Add Autodiscover Setup (optional)


So given the above information, the only way that I could make these changes would be to set the nameservers to default values.

So, would I then leave those nameserver values set to the defaults or would I change them to ones appropriate for the ex why zee dot com service. And if I do change them to ones appropriate for the ex why zee dot com service, would the values I set for 1. 2. 3. and 4. still be there and be usable to send and receive mail ?
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Old 29 Jul 2022, 06:04 AM   #5
placebo
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Quote:
Originally Posted by InquiringMind View Post
BUT... Fastmail seems to be having problems lately. I hope they correct them; however if they do not, I will have to move my accounts and my family member's account which has its own domain.
I saw your other thread. I don't think Fastmail thinks it's having problems. You just don't like how the company treats new domains, which is understandable. I suspect Fastmail would say its systems are working as expected.

Quote:
So given the above information, the only way that I could make these changes would be to set the nameservers to default values.

So, would I then leave those nameserver values set to the defaults or would I change them to ones appropriate for the ex why zee dot com service. And if I do change them to ones appropriate for the ex why zee dot com service, would the values I set for 1. 2. 3. and 4. still be there and be usable to send and receive mail ?
Either Enom hosts your DNS or Fastmail does. Either way, you can edit your MX, SPF, and DMARC records and set them to their correct values. If you're intending to leave Fastmail, though, it would be best to set the nameservers to the default values Enom supplies and have Enom host DNS for your domain.
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Old 29 Jul 2022, 06:17 AM   #6
InquiringMind
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Hi placebo,

The email with its own domain seems to be working okay now.

However, one and only one of my many emails accounts that use Fastmail's domain and all are accessed by the same exact Android client, Fairemail, is experiencing IMAP disconnects over and over.
Push notifications to me are sometimes being delayed by 20 minutes on just that one account even though it is the same phone and same client app.
According to Fairemail's creator, who reviewed my logfiles...

There are many errors like this:

java.io.EOFException: Unexpected end of ZLIB input stream

Which basically means that the connection was actively terminated. The email server could have done this, or something between the email server and the app.


Like I said, the other email accounts all use Fastmail's domain and are on the same phone, same client app, same cell service, same wifi connection, etc. are all working okay.

I submitted a ticket about the problem account and I am waiting.
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Old 29 Jul 2022, 06:24 AM   #7
InquiringMind
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Quote:
Either Enom hosts your DNS or Fastmail does. Either way, you can edit your MX, SPF, and DMARC records and set them to their correct values. If you're intending to leave Fastmail, though, it would be best to set the nameservers to the default values Enom supplies and have Enom host DNS for your domain.
So then I can use Enom's nameservers, but have the records for:
1. MX Records (required)
...
2. SPF Record (recommended)
...
3. DKIM Authentication (recommended)
...
4. Autodiscover Setup (optional)

be the values for the ex why zee dot com
and the email sending and receiving would work correctly ?
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Old 30 Jul 2022, 10:18 AM   #8
placebo
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Yes, with the caveat that obviously whoever is hosting your domain's email has to have everything working on its end.
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Old 31 Jul 2022, 12:04 PM   #9
InquiringMind
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Thank you, placebo. I appreciate you helping me get this straight.

So, to summarize:

Enom is a marketer of Domain Services for Resellers.

Accuwebhosting is a Domain Registrar that uses Enom as its source.

Accuwebhosting provides access to Enom's simple control panel for Accuwebhosting's customers.

If you use the Default nameservers values, you can also control the settings for MX, SPF, DKIM, Autodiscovery, etc. using Enom's control panel.

If you use another company's nameservers as values in the Enom control panel, you cannot set any other categories like ones for email service like MX, SPF, DKIM, Autodiscovery, etc.

Fastmail is an email hosting service that let you use your own domain for example myowndomain.com

When Fastmail lets you use your own domain, they recommend you set the nameserver values to point to their nameservers. When you do that, Fastmail.com sets the values for MX, SPF, DKIM, Autodiscovery, etc. for you.

The ex why zee dot com is another email service provider that lets you use your own domain. They recommend that you use the default nameservers values from your Registrar, but you have to enter the values for email hosting service for MX, SPF, DKIM, Autodiscovery, etc.yourself. They do not do it for you. So when you enter these values, even though the nameservers are Enom's defaults, the email service values point to The ex why zee dot com. If you wanted to use the nameserver values for The ex why zee dot com, you would have to transfer your domain to be registered by The ex why zee dot com, you must have had your domain for 60 to 90 days, and if you did that, then The ex why zee dot com would set the values for email service ( MX, SPF, DKIM, Autodiscovery, etc. ) for you.

Whatever nameserver values you use is the entity that allows control of the settings for email service ( MX, SPF, DKIM, Autodiscovery, etc. ), but regardless of which service you use to enter those values, they can point to whatever email host you intend to use.

I hope I finally have this right.
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Old 2 Aug 2022, 03:57 AM   #10
SideshowBob
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Why are you writing "ex why zee dot com"?
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Old 2 Aug 2022, 06:27 PM   #11
JeremyNicoll
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Test ... can I c&p in a certain domain, as plain text?

https://www.******.com/account/knowl...wn-Domain.html

Hmm (editing this after I saved my reply): I entered it as plain text, not enclosed in url /url tags, but the forum software (a) enclosed it, and (b) removed all the domain name part between "www." and ".com".

When I explicitly attempted to add it as a link, the forum software accepted what I provided then - when I saved the text - changed it:

https://www.******.com/account/knowl...wn-Domain.html

How odd. Maybe the company represented by that domain had an argument with the person who runs this forum?

Last edited by JeremyNicoll : 2 Aug 2022 at 06:31 PM. Reason: Indicate process used to generate this reply.
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Old 6 Aug 2022, 08:23 AM   #12
hadaso
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll View Post
.....
How odd. Maybe the company represented by that domain had an argument with the person who runs this forum?
probably the domain was banned in the past for some reason.
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Old 25 Jun 2023, 05:59 AM   #13
Yorshka
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Yes, you have correctly understood the response from the Domain Registrar. Here is a breakdown of the steps they suggested:
1. Change the nameservers to default values.
This means you should set the nameservers of your domain to the default values provided by Enom.

2. Edit the values for MX, SPF, DKIM, and CNAME.
Once the nameservers are set to the default values, you can access the DNS zone management in Enom's control panel. From there, you can edit the values for MX records, SPF records, DKIM, and CNAME as required by your email service provider, theexwhyzee.com.

3. Then go back and change the nameservers to the proper values.
After you have made the necessary changes to the DNS records, you can change the nameservers back to the proper values specified by your email service provider or any other desired nameservers.

The response clarifies that changing the nameservers will not affect the MX, SPF, DKIM, and CNAME records you have entered in the DNS zone. It confirms that you can manage your DNS zone and its records from the website localization where the nameservers are pointing.

Please note that it's always a good practice to double-check the instructions and make sure you follow the steps accurately to avoid any unintended consequences.

Last edited by Yorshka : 27 Jun 2023 at 04:34 AM.
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Old 27 Jun 2023, 01:41 AM   #14
InquiringMind
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Yorshka View Post
Yes, you have correctly understood the response from the Domain Registrar. Here is a breakdown of the steps they suggested:

1. Change the nameservers to default values.
This means you should set the nameservers of your domain to the default values provided by Enom.

2. Edit the values for MX, SPF, DKIM, and CNAME.
Once the nameservers are set to the default values, you can access the DNS zone management in Enom's control panel. From there, you can edit the values for MX records, SPF records, DKIM, and CNAME as required by your email service provider, theexwhyzee.com.

3. Then go back and change the nameservers to the proper values.
After you have made the necessary changes to the DNS records, you can change the nameservers back to the proper values specified by your email service provider or any other desired nameservers.

The response clarifies that changing the nameservers will not affect the MX, SPF, DKIM, and CNAME records you have entered in the DNS zone. It confirms that you can manage your DNS zone and its records from the location where the nameservers are pointing.

Please note that it's always a good practice to double-check the instructions and make sure you follow the steps accurately to avoid any unintended consequences.
Thank you for your reply and for spelling this out so clearly.

I would just like to add a few comments since some time has passed since I initially posted my question.

1. These are important topics for anyone who has email of any kind. While on the surface you would only think that this pertains to those folks who use their own domain, there is the general issue of connectivity.

Currently I am having a problem of getting severe delays in receiving emails that have attachments that are going from Polarismail to a Fastmail account that uses Fastmail's domain. When I sent the outbound email from Polarismail to mail-tester, it mentioned that some of the authentication info was blank. I then asked "Tech Support" for Polarismail to add in those missing items for smoother authentication. "Tech Support" pushed back hard and rude that only one piece of authentication info is necessary and they were unwilling to add in any other info even though it was for Polarismail's own domain. When I raised the connectivity problem with Fastmail's "Tech Support" I got the response from them that it is a very hard problem and must be some routing issue only solvable by a wizard and hobbits. I suggested to Fastmail's "Tech Spport" that since I have Spam Filtering turned off and am not using custom domains, that perhaps their general spam filter was having a problem analyzing pdf's and image files, their response was again that they believe it to be some bizarre routing issue and very very hard to solve. It has been over a month since I asked Fastmail's "Tech Support" to solve this problem where inbound emails could be delayed up to 2 hours and still no solution. It reminds me of a commercial for replacement windows where they say if you use a different manufacturer and installer, each one points the finger at the other when there are problems.

2. These database catagories and the values entered therein are very difficult to understand. There are not a lot of easy to understand explanations that are easy to find either. You would think this contrary since every business of more than one person would probably want their own domain, but I guess the notion is that the email host would handle it all. Uh, no that does not seem to happen well. I wish that there was a good primer that everyone would be able to point to. It would have saved me a lot of fumbling around.

3. By now, email should be "Set it and Forget it!" So many years since the concept of email was born, yet like everything else, the minutia is what causes problems even in seemingly easy transactions.

Many thanks to all who helped.
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Old 27 Jun 2023, 09:03 AM   #15
JeremyNicoll
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Quote:
Originally Posted by InquiringMind View Post
Currently I am having a problem of getting severe delays in receiving emails that have attachments that are going from Polarismail to a Fastmail account that uses Fastmail's domain

...

When I raised the connectivity problem with Fastmail's "Tech Support" I got the response from them that it is a very hard problem and must be some routing issue only solvable by a wizard and hobbits.

I suggested to Fastmail's "Tech Spport" that since I have Spam Filtering turned off and am not using custom domains, that perhaps their general spam filter was having a problem analyzing pdf's and image files...

their response was again that they believe it to be some bizarre routing issue and very very hard to solve.

2. These database catagories and the values entered therein are very difficult to understand.
The "database" categories are mainly the IP addresses of the name servers that someone wanting to send mail to you has to look up (or more likely their mail provider has to once they've "sent the email to their provider for onward transmission) to find out where to send your mails to, and the IP address of the servers willing to accept your mails.

Internet traffic is not generally sent directly from the sending machine to the receiving one; instead it passes through any number of intermediate machines - none of which are under the control of you, or your mail provider, or the receiving system.

There are bottlenecks though - most mail (and website traffic and everything else) between eg the UK and the US will pass through one of a limited set of machines each end of the transatlantic cables.

As many machines in these networks are connected to many others there's more than one way for a piece of information to be sent from one to another. It could go directly (if there's a direct connection between the two machines and it's not too busy) or it could take a very indirect route passing through umpteen intermediate machines.

The internet was designed in the first place as a military/defence-network with resilience built in so that if machines (or cities) were wiped off the net traffic could still flow from places (not yet wiped off) to others ... and would find its own route through machines that were still connected. It's not necessarily efficient though.

Each of those machines has to keep uptodate a list of the machines it is currently connected to, and those that are reachable through the ones it is connected to.

Quite often loops get defined - so a message being sent from machine A to machine K might go to B and then C and then D .... and then D (for reasons no-one can fathom might send it back to B because it "knows" that its route to K is via B. Or was, even if it isn't any longer. And then maybe B sends it to E next time rather than C.

And maybe it NEVER gets to K. Or only does when one particular jump is less busy than usual. Or ...

It's NOT easy for eg Fastmail to work out why incoming traffic doesn't arrive timeously. Even if they can decide that there's a problem between two (sets of) machines, they don't necessarily have any way to contact the people who administer those machines, let alone the ability to convince them that there's a problem in the routeing tables in their machines.


If Fastmail think routeing is the problem then this has nothing to do with their spam processing .... which would only happen once your slow-to-arrive mail has arrived at FM. They can hardly scan the attachments before they arrive.

If you think your mails (& attachments) HAVE arrived at FM and then got lost inside FM's own network that's completely different.

All those hops from machine to machine are what's described in successive sets of "Received:" headers in a mail. The ones nearest the top of the "raw mail" are those that happened most recently. If you look at the timestamps on a mail that arrived, but took ages to arrive, you should see on which "hop" the delay occurred. You would need to look at a set of delayed emails to see if they all get delayed at the same point.
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