Linked Connector In Exchange 2010

I got an email today asking whether there are more than two types of connectors in Exchange 2010. That got me to think that there are admins who think that only “send” and “receive” connectors exist in 2010. Linked Connector is a receive connector that is linked to a send connector. It is linked in…

I got an email today asking whether there are more than two types of connectors in Exchange 2010. That got me to think that there are admins who think that only “send” and “receive” connectors exist in 2010.

Linked Connector is a receive connector that is linked to a send connector. It is linked in such a way that any emails that comes in through the receive connector is sent out immediately through the send connector. It is mainly used when you want to accept all incoming emails and send it to a third party for message hygiene. There are a few points to note while configuring a linked connector.

  • Only one receive connector can be linked to one send connector.
  • The receive connector must exist before it can be linked to a send connector.
  • A linked send connector must route messages to a smart host.

You need to use the Shell to create a linked connector. The command below links my receive connector “From Internet” to a new send connector named “Message hygiene”.

New-SendConnector -Name “Message Hygiene” -LinkedReceiveConnector “Exch1\From Internet” -SmartHosts 1.2.3.4 -SmartHostAuthMechanism ExternalAuthoritative -DNSRoutingEnabled $False –MaxMessageSize Unlimited


You will get an error message if the dns routing isn’t set to false and max message size set to unlimited.




Linked Connector




Once the command completes successfully, you can see the connector in EMC.




Linked Connector in EMC




Make sure you specify the address space once the send connector is created or add the parameter in the command above.

5 Comments

  1. Hello Rajith, We have a very large environment under heavy control. Currently we are not using priority queuing although we are planning on turning it on changes like that are tough to get through in our environment. So they question came up if we can use connector linking as a way to insure a particular app never gets delayed when sending out. The thought was if we just use connector linking to have the app send the pages to the receive connector and it would immediately bypass any Queue Jam. Are we understanding this correctly? Will a message passed through this connector bypass any send latency involved on the server?

    Thanks
    Rich

  2. If the message destination is to an internal exchange mailbox will it still be sent to the smarthost?

    1. Rajith Enchiparambil says:

      Hi Gamal,

      If it is internal only email, NO. But if the email comes from outside to an internal user, most definitely yes. It all depends on how you configure it. It is mostly used for virus/spam scanning purpose.

  3. Bob Miller says:

    Can you have a single receive connector linked to multiple send connectors? I have 30 domains that I need to routed differently TLS and ByPass Edge Encryption appliance.

    1. Rajith Enchiparambil says:

      Hi Bob,

      I think it is a one to one relationship, as the settings will be different.

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