EX13-MB-000190 - The Exchange Receive Connector Maximum Hop Count must be 60.

Information

Email system availability depends in part on best practice strategies for setting tuning configurations. This setting controls the maximum number of hops (email servers traversed) a message may take as it travels to its destination. Part of the original Internet protocol implementation, the hop count limit prevents a message being passed in a routing loop indefinitely. Messages exceeding the maximum hop count are discarded undelivered.

Recent studies indicate that virtually all messages can be delivered in fewer than 60 hops. If the hop count is set too low, messages may expire before they reach their destinations. If set too high, an undeliverable message may cycle between servers, raising the risk of network congestion.

Solution

Update the EDSP.

Open the Exchange Management Shell and enter the following command:

Set-ReceiveConnector -MaxHopCount 60

or

The value as identified by the EDSP that has obtained a signoff with risk acceptance.

Repeat the procedure for each Receive connector.

Item Details

Audit Name: DISA Microsoft Exchange 2013 Mailbox Server STIG v2r3

Category: SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATIONS PROTECTION

Plugin: Windows

Control ID: 58eb2bc2ed45100e07e33f749722b1b9097546a8a776055033ee2d16c1b47209

Detections

Analytics

EX13-MB-000190 - The Exchange Receive Connector Maximum Hop Count must be 60.

Information

Solution

See Also

Item Details