[X4U] Max Mail Size?

[Gretchen Hayman]

On Oct 27, 2004, at 08:52, Cover, Chris wrote:

> It appears that there is a maximum size for mail. Is this true?

Well, practically speaking, yes.  Message size limits depends on the 
MTA (Message Transfer Agent, aka "mail server") that you are using and 
its settings, as well as those of the recipient.   While you could 
probably set yours to some ridiculously large size, there would still 
be a practical limit somewhere that you would run into.  Example: while 
server A may pass 20MB e-mails, server B might only pass 4MB e-mails; 
sending 20MB from A to B would fail, because B wouldn't accept the mail 
for delivery.  Depending on the MTAs used in each and the settings of 
each, these failures may be silent (i.e. not showing up in the logs).

[Because of this silent failing, it can be "fun" sometimes trying to 
figure out why an e-mail disappears into the void, until the sender 
bothers to tell you they were trying to send a 30MB Word document and 
you have a 10MB e-mail size limit! ^_^ ]

Anyway, hope that helps a little bit.

gretchen