Question : Moving mail provider need to change mx entrydifferent provider for mail and web

ok, here is my situation. I am in a panic to ensure we do not loose any incoming email for my company.
We have a domainname.com which we use for our mail and website.
We have been using service provider A to host our email service but using service provider B for our website. When I log in to our registrar I can see the dns entires pointing to provider A the mail hosting site. I can also see that the website is forwarded to our website.ca
The registrar is internic.ca

We have been having small problems and have been looking to move both mail and web hosting to a single provider where we also have a website.net being hosted as well as the email for it. Today we have stopped getting emails since about noon. Logging in to the webmail shows same, but this shows the mail side is working to a point, but our email is obviously collecting somewhere.

If I go ahead and set up web and mail hosting at the new provider, how  do I initiate the MX entry changes or whatever is required to ensure we are able to collect the email which must be stacking  up somewhere. Or is the mail just collecting in various mail server outboxes of any body who is sending us email. The new provider will be 1and1 unless someone has a better idea.

Once all our email is going to the new provider we can use webmail at the old provider to check for any email that has slipped through to the old provider. Am I correct to assume that all web and mail dns is handled at the registrar? If so how do I tell it to give the dns for our new provider for mail.

I think I only have a short period of time to resolve this, but I don't want to make a mistake, since I assume the mail is just out there waiting to be delivered right now.

Please advise any help to ensure I do not make a bad mistake for my company.

Thanks
Doug

Answer : Moving mail provider need to change mx entrydifferent provider for mail and web

To find out who is managing your DNS goto:
http://www.internic.net/whois.html
Enter you domain name and click the submit button.  You should see something like
   Domain Name: MYDOMAIN.COM
   Registrar: ENOM, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.enom.com
   Referral URL: http://www.enom.com
   Name Server: NS1.A2WEBHOSTING.COM
   Name Server: NS2.A2WEBHOSTING.COM
   Status: clientDeleteProhibited
   Status: clientTransferProhibited
   Updated Date: 22-sep-2007
   Creation Date: 02-nov-1994
   Expiration Date: 01-nov-2008

Look for the Name Server Information  (5th and 6th line) in this example.
Enter this back into the search box and select the namserver radio button.  click on search.
   Server Name: NS1.A2WEBHOSTING.COM
   IP Address: 69.39.89.180
   Registrar: ENOM, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.enom.com
   Referral URL: http://www.enom.com

Look for the whois Server.   Go to that site.
Enter the domain name for the name server  (a2webhosting.com in this example)
You should see the full registration information for the name servers it should look something like this:
Registrant:
A2 Hosting, Inc.
Domain Administrator
PO Box 2998

Ann Arbor , 48106 US


Administrative:
A2 Hosting, Inc.
Domain Administrator
PO Box 2998

Ann Arbor , 48106 US
Phone: +1.7342224678
Fax: +1.7345276565



Technical:
A2 Hosting, Inc.
Domain Administrator
PO Box 2998

Ann Arbor , 48106 US
Phone: +1.7342224678
Fax: +1.7345276565

This is likely to be your ISP, but it may not be.  
You will need to contact the technical contact here to have them change the MX record to point to your new mail mail provider.    Once the change is put in place it may take up to 24 hours for all mail to start flowing to the new servers because mail servers that have already talked to your current mail server today will cache the information for a period of time.    If you have multiple nameservers listed in the first result and they are not from the same domain then you will have to do this with each of the companies listed.

In most cases the company that you switching your mail hosting to should be able to help you with this process.