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Recently our server's domain had lapsed, meaning we hadn't pay to renew in time and they had stopped it from pointing to our server. Even after this, however, we've been able to send and receive emails.
In my mind that doesn't make sense. I may be wrong, but I thought the process was:
- We have a server set up with an IP address.
- We purchase a domain that points to the IP.
- Browser requests to that domain head to the company we purchased the domain from.
- The company's server maps that domain to our server's IP.
- We receive the broswer request.
- Same thing goes for email: the domain after the '@' symbol is where the request is sent.
How exactly does an email sent to an expired domain still manage to make it's way to my inbox?
1there is a Time To Live that each domain has. This indicates how quickly changes should be propagated through the DNS system. Typical TTL is 24 hours. – Supercereal – 2012-05-01T14:34:35.733
@Kyle I'm not sure if that's correct... Firstly, our domain lapsed about four days ago, quite a bit beyond the typical TTL. Also browser requests are no longer loading our website properly, so why would the TTL affect the website but not the email? (It's not often I sound so ignorant!) – ACobbs – 2012-05-01T14:42:25.507
Your TTL could be longer, I have seen them last as long as a week. You can check where the MX records for you domain are pointing here: http://mxtoolbox.com/
– Supercereal – 2012-05-01T15:11:19.073@Kyle What's the point of suggesting mxtoolbox.com when this service can't find Authoritative Nameserver of domain? – Apple II – 2012-05-01T15:20:34.647
@SachinShekhar I don't know his domain name. Do you know for a fact it has actually lapsed? Was there any harm in asking him to do an MX lookup? worst case scenario he says it can't find the domain and we know it was local server caching. If it did return mx records then something else is going on or he needs to provide more info. – Supercereal – 2012-05-01T19:16:30.957