Re: Email messages: How large is too large?

[Peter Deutsch <peterd at videotron.ca>]

Dick St.Peters wrote:
> However, I'm now of the opinion that email is first-class mail, not
> parcel post.

Seems like a question to be decided by users, not engineers.

Most of the mail I receive is simple text or Word docs, and thus well
under 1M, but last night I received two pieces of email from my brother
full of scanned slide images, one at 1M and one at 2M. Should I write
back and chastize my brother for inappropriate behaviour, or should I
reply with slides of my own? emember, scanners are down to $Cdn75. Oh,
and new videocards permit video capture.

Heck, seems to me that it's time to retire the buggy whips and realize
that users have a legitimate requirement for larger files sizes. This
doesn't necessarily mean every user needs it, but it points to the kind
of support the system will require in the near future.


> > But how large is too large?
> 
> I imposed a 5 MB limit here after someone sent a single message of more
> than 100 MB to one of our dialup users.  This past week I had a user
> get upset that we wouldn't accept a 28 MB message he wanted someone to
> send him.

Not every user requires this kind of bandwidth today, but the
applications to generate sch data are here (sound, multiple still
images, video, sharing executables, etc). You can't unring the bell, so
it's probably worthwhile to study what can be done to mitigate the
impact.

					- peterd



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