sending large attachments via email
I saw a customer that was having many problems with sending emails.
Sometimes the emails would sit in the outbox for hours, until they get deleted.
I looked at many options, and could only see a problem with MS outlook: the automatic send/receive was scheduled to run every minute, rather than every 10 minutes. I changed it to every 15 minutes, as some of the attachments were quite large.
I didn’t realise at first, but I eventually realised that the attachments were quite large.
Given the nature of ADSL, receiving is much faster than sending… so while ADSL1 can receive at about 1.5Mb per minute, it can only send at 0.5 Mb per minute. While ADSL2+ can receive up to 22Mb per minute, it can only send at 1Mb per minute.
This is great for surfing the net (and receiving emails), as most of the traffic is in-coming.
But when you try sending emails, you are limited to 1Mb per minute… so a 22Mb file (which is very quick to copy onto a USB drive), will take at least 22 minutes to send… a 60Mb file will take at least 1 hour.
In this case, the customer had file that varied between 7Mb and 300Mb… all quite large for email… particularly when most ISPs will time-out an email, it it take longer than 30 minutes to send.
So what are the alterntives?
- A remove internet drive (like dropbox). You get no email timeouts, but can still only send at 1MB per minute. Plus the person at the other end also needs to install the dropbox software… its all a bit clumsy, but can work well if you need to send large files to many people.
- Write a CD / DVD and post it… a CD can store 700 Mb, a DVD can store 4,500 Mb (ie 4.5 Gb)… This is easily the cheapest solution, but it can take some time to “burn” each CD.
- write to a USB drive and post it, or take it with you to transfer to another PC. USB drives can store up to 32Gb, are quite quick, but are small and easy (and costly) to lose.
The recipient doesn’t have to have dropbox in order for you to send them files. It is possible to put the file in your public folder and give them an http link to the file (right click the file and select option to copy url to clipboard). Dropbox doesn’t have a browsable directory listing, so only those people that know the file exists and know the actual url to it can access it.
The biggest issue with dropbox is the speed of uploading is really slow, much slower than you might think, because it’s optimized not to suck up all your bandwidth and just upload in the background. It’s ok for smaller attachments, but very large files can take forever.
When I have larger files to transfer to people and I don’t want to wait around for dropbox, I usually upload them via ftp to my web space and send them a link.
The exception would be the extremely large files (or collections of files) in which case I’d mail it to them, usually burned to DVD.
USB thumb drives would be a great idea, but only if there is a regular flow of transfers between both parties, where the drives would be reused and sent back to you, or in the case of a product that is sold and the cost of the thumb drive is factored into the price.
The issue with mailing files is waiting for delivery. You have to take that time into consideration. Is it faster to wait for ground delivery or to find another way to transfer it over the internet?
Another option for files up to 1GB is Pando, but that does require special software. It uses bit torrent technology to transfer the files, and the Pando server acts as the main seed, once you have uploaded the files to them. It also allows your recipients to begin downloading the files before you have even finished uploading them.
A friend of mine had developed an application (Btts) that made it possible to easily operate your own small scale torrent tracker from your desktop, which would allow you to combine it with any torrent client to create a torrent file you could send as an attachment, instead of the file itself. Originally, it was available to the public from his website, but hosting problems occurred and he doesn’t have the site any more. I keep asking him to attach it to the forum post announcing it (it was an entry into a coding contest) but he keeps forgetting. If there is some interest in it, I could bug him again and not let up till he attaches it. 😉
If he does, it would be found here: http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=13569.msg120758#msg120758
Using that would be very similar to using Pando, with the following differences:
* No file size limits.
* Any torrent client could be used by the recipients. Doesn’t require specialized proprietary software by some profit driven company.
* You’d have to continue to run the tracker and seed with your torrent client till everyone has acquired the file. If you shut down your PC, it becomes unavailable.
* No time limits for the availability of the files. You could seed it forever, if you want.
In the case of certain file types, like large PDFs, you could also use something like Google Docs, not just to host the file for you, but you can also use it to create it, eliminating the need to actually upload it when you are finished.
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Another favorite option is File Apartment (http://www.fileapartment.com). Easy to use, no software to download or registration, up to 1 GB, free option, safe, and secure.