Introduction to Exchange message transfer and routing

Message transfer and routing overview

Message transfer determines how messages are processed and delivered

Message routing refers to the way messages are delivered between servers.

To route and transport messages using the server role in the configuration

Hub Transport Server

Hub Transport servers and edge servers

When using only the Hub Transport server, it is responsible for:

Routing and transporting messages within your organization

Receive mail from outside your organization and transfer it to a mailbox server within your organization

Receive mail from a mailbox server within an organization, and then route them outside the organization

When you assume a transport and routing task with a different server role

The same point: whether the Hub Transport server undertakes message transfer and routing tasks or is shared by the Hub Transport server and the Edge Transport server, both the message transfer and routing tasks are handled by the Hub Transport server for routing and transport messages within the organization.

Different points: If you are just a stand-alone Hub Transport server, messages from within or outside your organization are handled by the Hub Transport server. And if you deploy an Edge Transport server. The Edge Transport server will process messages from outside.

Scenario: If the company deploys only the internal system's mail server, it does not need to communicate with the public-network mail server. Then it is sufficient to select only the Hub Transport server. If the company is very focused on security and has a lot of connections to the Internet Mail system. It is recommended that you deploy the environment for the Hub Transport server + Edge Transport server.

When you use a Hub Transport server and an Edge Transport server to route and transfer messages:

Hub Transport server handles the routing and transmission of messages within an organization

The edge server receives messages from outside the organization, and then routes to the Hub Transport servers in the organization and finally to the mailbox server

The Hub Transport server receives mail from the mailbox servers in the organization, and then routes to the edge servers, and finally routes the messages to destinations outside the organization

SMTP connectors

Exchange uses connectors to send and receive messages. The connector provides a one-way path to deliver mail to a specific destination

There must be at least two SMTP connectors on the server:

SMTP Send Connectors

SMTP Receive Connector

1>. SMTP Send Connectors

Represents the logical gateway that is passed when outbound mail is sent.

To send an SMTP e-mail message, an SMTP send connector is required and multiple servers can send mail using the same Send connector