Finding DNS and SMTP server ID's

Another helpful hint:

ipconfig /?

exists!

/? This is a way to teach yourself stuff.

Along those lines, I have to give credit to Cisco, as they have the best built in help I have seen for the command line.

Hi Rich,

I feel your pain about finding IPs in a network that no one owns/knows. I think you are doing similar task I'm doing installing IMS (Integrated Messaging System) services on voicemails of phone systems your company installs (hence the post in c.d.telecom.tech). I just wanted to throw another idea at you that I find useful in such cases.

I think you already know that in a DHCP network you can fire your laptop up with DHCP enabled and then "ipconfig /all" to see the default gateway and DNS servers you need to know. For the SMTP server though simply use your own, don't even mess with your customer's. That is: you as a vendor have full control over what e-mails leave the IMS box (or whatever box you are installing) and so the security issues are minimal. All you have to do is to have your company's website admin create a mailbox that you will then use for outgoing mail, such as mail.yourcompany.com . There is nothing better than subtly reminding your customer about yourselves and your importance several times a day when their voicemails arrive in their e-mail boxes from YOUR mail server. Your website resource expenditures are minimal unless you are dealing with a huge client where chances are you will find an IT person willing to help anyways.

Hope this helps,

You're actually close Dimitri. What I'm setting up is a very basic fax server. In order to function it requires an email server login of its own, as well as the mail server ID. And, since it sets it's clock off the NIST server it needs the DNS server id so it can get the time info.

Since each time I install one for a customer I have to assign a new email address I can't really be burdening our company mail server with that much traffic.

My personal problem with these things is that if you lose the internet you lose fax capabilities. But the owner of our company is big on these things as they are an inexpensive alternative to large fax servers that are integrated into voicemail systems.

Take care, Rich

God bless the USA