Planning Connections to Other Sites and Systems

After you plan your Microsoft Exchange Server organization, sites, and servers, you can plan connections to other sites and systems. This chapter provides an overview of the steps for setting up these connections. For information about configuring connectors, see Microsoft Exchange Server Operations.

Following are important considerations:

Messaging processes   Microsoft Exchange Server routing and addressing processes will influence your connection plans, especially if you will be routing messages over multiple or restricted connections.

Types of connections   Local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN) connections typically provide the highest throughput, but other connection types may be used.

Network protocols and addressing   A common network protocol must be configured on each system that communicates over a LAN or WAN connection, and systems must be able to communicate with each other over the network.

Message transfer protocols   Message transfer protocols used between your sites or used by other messaging systems may determine your choice of connectors.

Message transfer options   Each message transfer protocol provides a variety of message transfer options for configuration on each connected system.

By using Microsoft Exchange Server, you can establish communications between sites and with numerous foreign systems. The following sections describe how to choose and configure the Site Connector, Microsoft Mail Connector for PC Networks, Microsoft Mail Connector for AppleTalk Networks, X.400 Connector, Internet Mail Service, and the Microsoft Exchange Connector for Lotus cc:Mail. This chapter also describes the various types of routing costs.