Troubleshooting and managing receive connector

[Andersson]

Some companies do not like the idea of displaying the server name in SMTP connections.

We can change the banner information used by a Receive Connector using the cmdlet.

Set-ReceiveConnector ‘<Connector Name>’ -Banner “220 Mail Server”

 

 

We can control the number of protocol errors in a single session. The default value is 5, to configure it to 2 we can use the following cmdlet:

Set-ReceiveConnector ‘<Connector Name>’ -MaxProtocolErrors 2

When you suspect you have a problem with the receive connector it’s a good idea to start the verbose logging and check the logs, they are default placed in:

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\TransportRoles\Logs\ProtocolLog”

 

To achieve this, it can be done either in EMC; under Server configuration, HUB Transport, select server and the Receive Connector or it can be done with EMS;

Set-ReceiveConnector -Identity ‘<Connector Name>‘ -ProtocolLoggingLevel Verbose

 

In most case the default permission when creating an internal relay connector works well, but observe that sometimes it won’t work, then use the verbose logging to check.

Get-ReceiveConnector ‘<Connector Name>’ | Get-ADPermission

 

 

To give higher permissions the command; Set-ADPermission can be used or use Adsiedit.msc, find the Receive Connector and give the user/group the missing permissions.

Make sure to select;

 

 

• Submit Messages to Server
• Submit Messages to any Recipient
• Bypass Anti-Spam
• Accept routing Headers

For the connections that won’t work in the normal way, create a new connector and don’t choose any permission, also start the verbose logging.

Then use adsiedit after creating a group in AD with the users that should be able to relay/use the connector.

 

 

Of course anonymous can also be chosen but it’s not very secure!

 

 

Thanks for reading!