Receiving Big Attachments Email

[web_india]

One of my clients who's using a dial-up connection is receiving emails with attachments from his overseas customers. The attachments are of size ranging from 1 Mb - 4 Mb.
Since, due to slow speeds here in india, it takes him several minutes and sometimes hours to download even one big mail, and moreover, several ISP's limit the size of attachments to 1 or 2 Mb, therefore, he's looking for alternatives.
What are the alternatives available and which should be the best to be suggested?

Thanks.

[bobriggs]

Well, you're talking about incoming...but...

I have one client who needs to send photos thru email, maybe a bunch, and it will come out to 1.5MB to 2 or more MB in size.

He has to send these to people on AOL, hotmail, etc, the usual problems. AOL land people will never figure out what to do with the zipped file that it converts the files to; hotmail people have limitations.

Right now I'm telling him NOT TO SEND large emails. Place the photos or documents on the website, then place a link to them in the email.

Speeds up the email, people like it a lot, gets a lot of bookmarks, etc.

Your problem is different, however. Depends a lot on the people sending the attachments. Can they put a link to the attachment on the email instead?

Remember, whether he's using http or pop, if he wants it, it's going to take a while since he/she's on dialup. A link to it in email will at least give the option to load or not load the attachment.

[richlowe]

You might also try compressing the attachments - I use winrar.

Richard Lowe

[martinibuster]

Your client could have a page set up on their web site, a form, that their overseas customers can access (you can even password protect the directory). On the form it tells them to browse for the file in order to upload it into another directory that's located on your client's web site. Your client can thus bypass the isp bottleneck.

Alternatively, the client can have a public ftp for receiving large files. The trick here is that your clients clients have to be savvy enough to know how to upload to an ftp. This is what I recently did with one of my clients, who had to upload some large picture files.

Anyone else have ideas?

:)

[Sinner_G]

Seconding the FTP idea. And I don't think you have to be very 'savvy' to upload a file, programs such as WS_FTP make that very easy.

[web_india]

bobriggs :
>> Depends a lot on the people sending the attachments. Can they put a link to the attachment on the email instead?

Actually my client says he doesn't want to ask his clients to change their sending pattern of emails because :
1) he would consider their convenience/preference first (which is actually a good thought for better business)
2) he doesn't want to sound his overseas clients that he doesn't have the best IT infrastructure in place.

>> Remember, whether he's using http or pop, if he wants it, it's going to take a while since he/she's on dialup. A link to it in email will at least give the option to load or not load the attachment.

He's using pop3 with both domain based and also another from local ISP. He would definitely want to see the attachments anyways as these are mostly engineering drawings for his products.

richlowe :
>> You might also try compressing the attachments - I use winrar.

I too suggested the same to him but guess what - these are compressed winzip files ;)

[web_india]

martinibuster :
>> Your client could have a page set up on their web site, a form, that their overseas customers can access (you can even password protect the directory).
Do you suggest offering password directories for all customers and what about new prospects ?

>> Your client can thus bypass the isp bottleneck.
Can you explain it more as I see it, the client will still have to download the file ?

Sinner_G :
>> Seconding the FTP idea. And I don't think you have to be very 'savvy' to upload a file, programs such as WS_FTP make that very easy.
I was wondering whether a combination of email and FTP is possible ? The client's customers keep on sending the emails and my client can download them (only the attachments and not the email content) via FTP? Can it work? If yes, how to go about it ?

[Sinner_G]

Actually my client says he doesn't want to ask his clients to change their sending pattern of emails

In this case I would suggest your client invest some money and get himself a better connection, if that is in any way possible.

<edit>

combination of email and FTP

Only way I see that might work is having a webmail directly with an ISP. Maybe it would be possible then to detach from the mail directly onto the server and FTP it from there. Never tried it though.
</edit>

[martinibuster]

>> Your client can thus bypass the isp bottleneck.

ISP's put limits upon attachment sizes. Some email servers will accept attachments as big as 2mb, oftentimes, much smaller. That's the bottleneck I was referring to.

[web_india]

Thanks everyone for help.

For the time being, I've got him a separate domain and web space for email only with the attachment size allowed upto 3 MB.
But I am still thinking if I can get something else to work before he receives an email larger than 3 Mb :)

[garry]

When I get the big emails that slow me down, I hit cancel and log on to webmail through the internet and then have a look at what is sitting on the server.
If it looks like rubbish I delete it without opening & thus downloading.
But more often than not they are usually from people I know and have to still download to see what it contains.