If I have Exim installed, acting as a a relay to catch mail if a client is down. Say they have a mail server on 133.133.133.2 with a leased line, then they have an ISDN mail-backup mailserver on ...
You're right - if it's following the RFC, the sending server should attempt to communicate with the mail servers in order of their priority (from lowest priority to highest.) So if mx1.yourdomain.com ...