Frank Cox wrote:
You must have a real domain name to send email.Is there any technical reason (other than "we hate spammers") why email can't be sent to an IP address instead of a domain name? I know that mail sent to joeblow 123 456 789 001 doesn't work, but have never really understood why...
Mail is a special case in DNS since most organizations want delivery to be directed to a small number of servers, so the host/domain lookup always tries to follow MX records. If you want to use a literal IP address you have to enclose it in []'s to skip the MX lookup (and if you are doing it on the command line, enclose in ''s because the []' are shell metacharacters). mail 'joeblow [123 0 0 1]' will attempt a connection, but the receiving system may still not like it.
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Les Mikesell
lesmikesell gmail com