Re: [SAGE] choosing the proper max SMTP message size

[Tim Howe <vsync@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

"a42n8k9 dejazzd.com" <a42n8k9@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> The other side of the conundrum is that our users (and their
> correspondents) are not very technical and often have difficulty
> with FTP which results in help desk calls, etc.
[...]
> I'm curious about what most sites set the max SMTP message size to
> and how problems like this have been overcome or worked around.

Ran into this before myself.

If the problems users are running into are issues with
NAT/routers/firewalls, perhaps look into SFTP.  User interfaces are
available such as Filezilla and WinSCP.  It's still somewhat
"technical" in that users still need a username and hostname, but you
can set up key-based authentication, and it eliminates the nonsense
about ports and passive mode and anonymous and so forth.  Bonus: it's
encrypted.

Another option would be WebDAV.  Windows and Mac OS are supposed to be
able to just mount it and show it as a normal folder... very seamless.
You could run it through HTTPS to get the security.  Apache can do
this out-of-the-box I think.  Not sure, as I've only used the
Subversion module built on top of it.

It's frustrating...  there isn't really any reason documents shouldn't
be sent back and forth.  Except that users don't just send back and
forth but then it spreads out to a whole network of correspondents and
some get trimmed and variations of the document are created and not
tracked and ....

At least Microsoft has single storage of duplicated attachments
(although I haven't heard how intelligent it is, e.g., if the same
document is attached to a different message rather than forwarded).
If only the message store didn't fall apart given a slight breeze.

Cheers
Tim

-- 
But is [the U.S.A.] Christian?  This is not a matter of angels dancing
on the heads of pins.  Christ was pretty specific about what he had in
mind for his followers.  What if we chose some simple criterion --
say, giving aid to the poorest people -- as a reasonable proxy for
Christian behavior?  After all, in the days before his crucifixion,
when Jesus summed up his message for his disciples, he said the way
you could tell the righteous from the damned was by whether they'd fed
the hungry, slaked the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the
stranger, and visited the prisoner.  What would we find then?
    -- Bill McKibben,
       The Christian paradox: How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong
       <URL:http://www.harpers.org/archive/2005/08/0080695>