Question : Email is not working after MX record change

I am somewhat desparate for help here.  I wanted to start hosting our own email on our Exchange 2003 server, and get rid of our 3rd party hosting company (for email only, as they still host our web site).  I contacted Network Solutions this morning and they changed our MX record for our domain to point to our public IP address.  I have our firewall forwarding all SMTP traffic to the internal address of our exchange server, but  I assumed that as the MX record change propagated throughout the Internet, that client and customer emails would STILL be going to the old mail server until the change is propagated everywhere.  But apparently, once I changed the MX record NOTHING works until this propagation is complete (24 to 36 hours they tell me).

We have no ability to recieve external email at this point and I am desparate to get something working.  Is there a way to force propagation or is there anything I can do to get our mail working in the mean time?

Answer : Email is not working after MX record change

Too late now, but a better way of doing this would have been to get your Exchange box working, then have your old provider forward all email to your public IP so it was going to your Exchange box, THEN change the MX records, only cancelling the original provider after the DNS records propagated.  This way all mail would go to your public IP regardless which MX record clients used to find you, your old provider or your public IP.

Another handy way to test your Exchange box is go to a PC outside your network (home PC maybe), setup an account in Outlook Express with some email address (not on youir domain) and with the SMTP server set to your public IP.  Now try sending an email from OE to your work address and see if it arrives, it should go through Exchange to your mailbox.  You'll get an error in the Inbox of OE if it couldn't send mail to the Exchange server for some reason.