EMAIL != FTP

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

I've gotten a bunch of notes on this topic. Issues in order:

* Email encoding is inefficient. It doesn't have to be. A zipped
  uuencoded file is often smaller than the source file and rarely
  longer. Why not update the MIME standards to encourage compression
  of binaries? This is the network operators mailing list -- you can
  certainly go to IETF with operational concerns and have credibility.

  Then we could block attachments that don't implement the new encoding
  and, hey, actually improve the world!

* SMTP usually relays. Yes it often does. Typically you'll relay a couple
  of times. But most of those relays are at high bandwidth locations with
  lots of disk space -- they're not suffering.

* A POP site may find itself storing 200 copies of the same binary.
  That's true, and a problem. There's an obvious solution: do what
  mail daemons do and share the file among mailboxes, but that solution
  increases risk of corruption (e.g. the pointer to the file gets trashed
  and you retrieve the wrong attachment).

In short, I'm not sympathetic with the first two concerns.

Craig

2

* Email encoding is inefficient. It doesn't have to be. A zipped
  uuencoded file is often smaller than the source file and rarely
  longer. Why not update the MIME standards to encourage compression
  of binaries? This is the network operators mailing list -- you can
  certainly go to IETF with operational concerns and have credibility.

unless you intend to upgrade every server on the planet yourself, SMTP
is only 7 bit savvy.

a zipped/uuencoded file is 30%(?) bigger than just a zip file.

  Then we could block attachments that don't implement the new encoding
  and, hey, actually improve the world!

or punish those without the money to upgrade. yeah, piss on the 3rd world
and non-commercial entities, who needs em?

* SMTP usually relays. Yes it often does. Typically you'll relay a couple
  of times. But most of those relays are at high bandwidth locations with
  lots of disk space -- they're not suffering.

excuse me?

man, i heard this 10 years ago with uucp and BITFTP.

you have no idea who, or how many relays you are going to go through.

you cannot assume that they all have cheap high bandwidth locations with
lots of disk space.

in a previous email, i talked of some 400meg emails jamming a queue.

the messages were queued to user@yahoo.com.

the server was in asia, behind a 2meg satelite link that cost $120K USD/month.
(yes, one-hundred-twenty-thousand US dollars a month)

this was actally an expensive link. generally a 2 meg link to most of the
non-western world will only cost you $30K-$50K/month.

* A POP site may find itself storing 200 copies of the same binary.
  That's true, and a problem. There's an obvious solution: do what
  mail daemons do and share the file among mailboxes, but that solution
  increases risk of corruption (e.g. the pointer to the file gets trashed
  and you retrieve the wrong attachment).

i wouldn't be worried so much about corruption, as i would injection of a
single virus.