Re: Email messages: How large is too large?

[Vernon Schryver <vjs at calcite.rhyolite.com>]

> From: Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu

> ...
> No, it would be an old protocol.  See RFC1440, from July 1993.
>
> Is there sufficient interest to create a working group to overhaul RFC1440
> into something more usable in today's Internet?

In today's internet, filled with mentally challenged hacker d00ds, who
would allow any installation of a protocol that could fit the title
"Sender-Initiated/Unsolicited File Transfer" to move files larger than a
very few MByte, or what SMTP can already be (ab)used to move?
"Unsolicited" is the killer.

In other words, do you still have a writable anonymous FTP area?


Yes, I agree that is still entirely possible and quite desirable to have
a writable anonymous FTP account, but only if you erect sufficient
defenses, such as limiting file sizes and names and making files written
by outsiders unreadable by outsiders (thus fixing the warez/gif plague),
and if you are willing to deal with endless shrill warnings from CERT and
many other well meaning parties that your anonymous FTP area is writable.

Could such defenses be used with a "Sender-Initiated/Unsolicited File
Transfer" system?--probably, but they would not fix the reason for having
such a protocol.  The reason for it now seems to be to hide the unhidable
differences between big and small files and between internal and external
file transfers.


Vernon Schryver    vjs at rhyolite.com