I have a client with a generous attachment limit and they are being asked by Mgt to remove the limit. They are looking for some suggestions/recommendations. I believe that their current limit (30MB) is already large by corporate standards and should not be raised, but I am looking for some other opinions. Approximately 900 users with a mix of DWA and Notes clients with Domino 6.5.x.Please provide attachment limits, client type, client numbers, platform, how you impose limits if not server configuration document, and anything else you consider valuable.
I work under a 10mb limit, I think. Some places I mail to are capped at 5mb. We’re not running Domino and I don’t run the mail network so I won’t go into details.
In my experience, 30mb is pretty high, but I’ve been told my experience is a bit odd.
One thing you do need to worry about when increasing attachment limits like that is that at some point, you’ll start to see refusals from the recipients. At what point depends on who your large-attachment senders typically send to. It might be a problem for you, but it might not.
Personally at work or at home, I wouldn’t expect more than a 10mb file to get through by email to the recipient unless I already knew where their inbound attachment limit was.
If a third party product is a solution, you can try compressing attachments, or limiting them in the workstation (so there is no bandwidth consumption when the email is rejected).
We have a 5mb attachment limit, but also an extranet site (not Domino) that allows all company users to create a temporary directory with a 100mb limit which will last for 3 days - we can send a url to the site to outside users which lets them access the directory.
30mb is a very generous limit, most organisations I have dealt with top out at about 10mb.
One company got around it’s “I need this file via email” issue by creating a web-enabled database and inviting any external sender exceeding the limit to post their attachments in that database. They (the sender) could then include their recipient(s) in a notification list and a doc-link was sent to those people once the page was submitted.
I thought it was a good overall solution to the issue of users demanding a larger size limit, while balancing the storage management requirements of the organisation (who really needs a 20mb MPEG mailed to 500 internal users anyway…)
What’s not clear here is where the attachments are. If they’re being contained/accessed in a Notes docs & not being sent as e-mail, it wouldn’t appear to be a problem, although I have to agree that a 30 Gb limit is larger than some older client machines still in service! Assume the attachments are in Notes docs and aren’t being e-mailed, how are they primarily being accessed? over the web? through client machines? If via the web, then I’d be concerned about the DMZ machine’s ability to handle multiple web requests. The other variable here is what type of files these attachments are… and how much bandwidth they attenuate on the network. Just some food for thought here.
Seems like I run a “weird installation” but we do not impose any restrictions on attachment sizes - besides from blocking a user from sending messages larger than 10 mb - if they send to more than 10 people.
That is, one single user could in theory (and yes it has happened) send an entrie CD via e-mail… Of course it never arrived at the recipient, but I do believe that most users have no idea of what 10 mb is, and generally they don’t care (I don’t blame them - it’s not their job to know).
We have approx 1400 users spread out on 4 mail-servers (not clustered) running on Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003.
Most users have a quota of 1000 mb on their mail-file, not counting the 10% who just cannot clean out their mail-box to stay below quota.
This is a management decision and we are extending our SAN on a regular basis to allow for further growth.
I would believe that most installations typically impose the 10mb limit - which, in my opinion, should be sufficient… E-mail is not a good solution for file-sharing.
Hmmm. Technology limits keep going up. The cost of diskspace and bandwidth is minimal. Generally, e-mail is not an efficient filesharing tool for large files. I have never seen a cap larger than 10 Mb, so that sounds huge to me. Still, your issue sounds like it is more of a business issue than a technology issue.
Are there many separate business units and the limit is being challenged by one? Then a policy of protecting the interests of all stakeholders may be best. If the challenge is from an appropriate level, it may be harder to resist from an IT position. I would brainstorm the legitimate drawbacks and make sure that all primary stakeholders are apprised. Mention contingencies such as what will happen to the network the first time someone sends 100Mb of attachments to 100 users, etc.