On Dec 29, 2003, at 7:03 PM, Dan Egli wrote:
> Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
> | Dan Egli writes on 12/29/2003 6:47 PM:
> |
> |> I can see your point, but perhaps you can see ours. For
> example, my
> |> ISP's mail server (I'm on a cable modem) is SOO SLOW... I can
> LITTERALLY
> |
> |
> | What you can do is to use your cable ISP only for connectivity and
> | sending out mail through a remote mta that is run by people with more
> | clue, that you trust (using auth and tls to relay your mail out
> through
> | the smarthost).
> |
> | http://www.pobox.com is a service tailormade for this kind of
> situation.
>
> But services like POBox have three issues:
>
> 1) They CHARGE. I'm a poor student working part time trying to pay the
> bills with a family. I cannot really afford even the $15/yr.
>
I have a very hard time believing a statement like this. I see it all
the time on slashdot, and I don't think it holds water there either.
> 2) They want you to have your address as <whatever>@pobox.com. If I'm
> going through all the effort of running a MTA, I don't want people to
> have to worry about relaying through someone else just to get to me. I
> want them to be able to contact me directly.
>
They do. As far as they know, there's no difference. I get messages
on my home server while at work and vice-versa. Nobody has to know if
I'm at work or at home. Sometimes, I'm even at the beach house or
skiing in the mountains. They still contact me directly regardless of
where I happen to be. I don't need to have a different email address
for each place I might be.
> 3) they put limitations on things that I might not want. For example,
> PoBox limits emails to 10MB. I ROUTINELY send/receive 25+ mb messages
> to/from my employer. If I send a full source tree update, it's usually
> about 20MB BEFORE encoding. If we assume the standard encoding rate of
> the encoded message being 4/3 the physical size of the unencoded
> attachment, that puts it at around 26-27MB.
>
I can't even begin to tell you how wrong it is to use a mail server to
send attachments that size. Use a protocol designed to transfer large
files instead of one designed to send small ones. Off the top of my
head, CVS, sftp, WebDAV, and scp come to mind. All of them much easier
to set up, and CVS is specifically desinged to do what you're
describing.
> Now luckily for me, my employer's ISP does not block my IP. But if I
> need to send mail to someon not on my employer's ISP, I can run into
> issues.
>
How about using your employer's ISP's smtp server? It should be simple
enough to get them to have you authenticate to send through their
server. But then again, their admin will probably get angry with you
for sending massive file attachments.
-Michael
