Why am I getting an "Exceeded Hop count" failure email?

Question

Sometimes I get an exceeded hop count message when I send mail to external email addresses. I have looked at the headers of the message, and it seems to be looping on my mail server, why might this be?

Answer

if the domain that you are sending the mail to has an incorrect MX record configured, this can cause the problem – specifically if they have an MX record configured to point to the IP address 127.0.0.1

In these circumstances, GMS will look up the address, and then connect to the 127.0.0.1 address to deliver the mail. Because this is the localhost IP address, GMS connects to itself and delivers the email. This then results in the mail loop, and the error message “Exceeded hop count”.

The problem does not lie with GMS, but rather with the remote server, and as such, you will need to contact the adminstrator of the remote server to inform them of the problem.

See Also:

• Why do I get message has exceeded maximum number of hops?

Keywords:Hop Count