Email attachement limit

[brotherkennyh]

Hi,

There is quite an old post on this, but I thought I would bring it up again.

Is there still an attachment limit in place? Is it still 5MB? Someone tried to sent me a 5MB attachement and it bounced.

Is there any chance the limit can be increased?

Cheers

Kenny

[brotherkennyh]

again today I lost email because of an attachment limit.
Unfortunately I cannot stop people sending me large emails.

Can the limit be increased? If only a little.

[gourmet]

If you need huge attachments there are plenty of options available. Just to mention two.

http://www.sendspace.com/ allows 300MB files.
http://megaupload.com/ allow 1024MB files.

[jpatsg]

I thought SG was either forwarding or deleting, so why the attachment-size issue? Arranging for third-party (actually fourth-party) involvement appears to be an unnecessary complication.

But we remain very appreciative of the SG service, been using it for years.

[gourmet]

I thought SG was either forwarding or deleting, so why the attachment-size issue? Arranging for third-party (actually fourth-party) involvement appears to be an unnecessary complication.

Just because huge attachments consume huge amount of bandwidth. How many $$$ have you donated?

I'm not admin (ro team) of SG, but I'm admin of many other net services.

[habibie]

If you need huge attachments there are plenty of options available. Just to mention two.

http://www.sendspace.com/ allows 300MB files.
http://megaupload.com/ allow 1024MB files.

R U saying we can use either service from the above two links to send e-mails with an attachment of 300+ MB file in size to a protected e-mail address through our spamgourmet account?

[gourmet]

Send e-mails with an attachment of 300+ MB file in size to a protected e-mail address through our spamgourmet account?

Eh, maybe you should check out how those services work, and not ask so many funny questions.

But in general, email attachments are inefficient way to transfer binary data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64

But if you really want to send and receive huge attachments (up 1 on GB) you can use Trashmail. But as I said, I really don't recommend huge email attachments in any case, with any service.

[josh]

depending on the features enabled, it can happen that our code scans the entire message looking for instances of a "from" address (so that it can be replaced with a disposable address), and on big messages, that's expensive.

[habibie]

Send e-mails with an attachment of 300+ MB file in size to a protected e-mail address through our spamgourmet account?

Eh, maybe you should check out how those services work, and not ask so many funny questions.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I wasn't trying to be funny except trying to understand your vague comment w.r.t the file attachment on two links you suggested.

But in general, email attachments are inefficient way to transfer binary data.

I strongly disagree with what you said above, except in some cases ONLY. Depending on the applications, an e-mail attachment is perhaps one of the most versatile option to have. For instance, instead of wasting $$$ to send facsimiles cross countries, an e-mail attachment that provides a better quality will cost much less (may be free).

[jpatsg]

I thought SG was either forwarding or deleting, so why the attachment-size issue? Arranging for third-party (actually fourth-party) involvement appears to be an unnecessary complication.

Just because huge attachments consume huge amount of bandwidth. How many $$$ have you donated?

I'm not admin (ro team) of SG, but I'm admin of many other net services.

gourmet, yes I have donated $$$. Back when SG first started I was very grateful for this service and contributed at least twice, and I remember getting an immediate "thank you" from someone each time. But the $50 wasn't much and I haven't donated since, so your point is well taken. Thank you for asking (and reminding me).

depending on the features enabled, it can happen that our code scans the entire message looking for instances of a "from" address (so that it can be replaced with a disposable address), and on big messages, that's expensive.

josh, thanks for that reply. But why would your code bother scanning an attachment at all (if that's what you meant)? Wouldn't it be better to just not do that?

[gourmet]

But why would your code bother scanning an attachment at all (if that's what you meant)? Wouldn't it be better to just not do that?

Developers usually use the simplest possible working solution. Adding skipping algorithm, would require extra work, even if it would save CPU.

Optimizations are interesting trade-off, and daily battle.
- No optimizations, performance could be extreme poor.
- Too many optimizations, product will be never launched, because it's not ready yet.

Often it's better to ignore optimizations until it's clear that something seems to be broken (performing too badly) unless it's fixed.

In theory, replacing string in attachment could break it. So skipping attachments, would be wise in that sense too. After encoding it's highly unlikely but still possible that message contains just that right string. Change of course get's higher if e-mail address is shorter and attachment is larger. Except that base64 encoding doesn't include @ character at all. So it shoulnd't be a real world problem.

[josh]

But why would your code bother scanning an attachment at all (if that's what you meant)? Wouldn't it be better to just not do that?

message comes in as one big chunk of text, and we use regex matching on that chunk. To avoid scanning the attachment, we'd have to redesign the way we handle messages in a fundamental way - that may introduce performance concerns of its own, increasing the expense of processing messages without attachments (and there's really just not time to rewrite and test on that order of magnitude).

[brotherkennyh]

Interesting to see my post attracting so much attension.

I am also aware that there are services available to help with the transfer of large files and when I send large files myself I do not send them as email attachments.

The problem is when someone sends me an email attachment.

I appreciate what you are saying about the increase in the limit having performace issues, but is there no room at all to increase the limit? 6MB for example would have seen most of my bounced emails get through.

If it cannot be increased, simply getting a message to let me know the message has bounced would be helpful, for me as well as the original sender. I don't know how useful that would be for anyone else though.

Thanks for all the responses and the awesome service you are providing.