MX record

In the Domain Name System, an MX record is something that a domain uses to tell people and software the IP address of an email server. There can be more than one MX record for a domain. When there is more than one record, DNS uses a priority list that tells whatever is looking up the records to try the IP addresses in a certain order. For example, example.com might have a set of MX records that say for mail.example.com to try 127.0.0.5 first. If that try fails, another record will say to try 127.0.0.6. This behavior makes email more reliable.

Related pages
A record
AAAA record

References

Other websites
The domain name RFC

Category:Internet protocols