Question : How to close open relay in exchange 2003, and close open proxy in ISA

Since few days i was having problems with the internet speed. the ISP says that i may have open relay on exchange.

i am using windows 2003, exchnage 2003, ISA 2004 on one server. the server has 2 NICs, one for private and other for public IP.

i want to
1. close the open relay in exchange 2003 and

2. close the open proxy in ISA 2004 or configure it in such a way that it should not allow broadcasts.

my aim is to stop unnecssary traffic on my leased line.

need help.

Answer : How to close open relay in exchange 2003, and close open proxy in ISA

Not just un-necessary traffic. If your ES is Open Relay than you will soon be Spam Central and you'll end up with no traffic at all on your leased line coz your ISP will cut you off.

You can run the ES 2003 "wizard" to close out the "open relay" status. That will limit the exchange server to only accept mail which is *to* your domain (or domains). Your own users can still send mail out, of course, to any address. (Open System manager, right-click on the server name in the tree display, and click on Internet Mail Wizard.)

If your setup is more complex than the wizard can cope with, then it's probably more complex than we can answer here without knowing a little more about it.

One word of warning - it's quite common to set ES up to allow an *authenticated* user to send mail to anywhere on the planet. That's fine, but, PLEASE make sure that all your user accounts have properly secure passwords, as one common way for spammers to use you as a relay is to guess or crack one of your user passwords, then log in to your server as an Authenticated User.

Can't help you in the ISA question, I never use it. But the same applies - get it wrong and it'll let all those horrible spammers use your machine!