Email attachments and bandwidth usage bug

dman

dman

Perch
I am in the process of moving some domains over to my Jodohost account from another HSphere host. I recently ran into and issue with this other host and want to know if this will happen here as well.

Basically what happened is a user tried to send an attachment from Outlook to another user at the same domain. The sender attached a file(s) 22 MB in size. The email sat in the sender's outbox for a week trying to send but never was delivered because the attachment was too large. This ended up using 13GB of transfer traffic in a week, for one domain, only for mail.

I tested this at Jodohost and it appears that the mail server will accept email with attachments that are too large and it does not respond with an error. So it looks like this same issue could happen here?

Has any one else had this problem? Shouldn't the mail server return an error if the attachment is too large? Can it not see the size of the attachemnt prior to sending the whole email? If there is no error response prior to sending an undeliverable email, what is to keep a couple users from using up all my alloted bandwidth trying to send an email that will never be delivered? Seems like a big issue to pay for bandwidth for a email that isn't even delivered. Is there some way to manage this? Is it a bug? Any suggestions? Thanks!
 
I have heard or this from another host on the prifvate forums about 6-8 weeks ago, and I heard mention of it on other forums but I have never experienced first hand.

I think some of the fault lies with how Outlook never gives up :)
 
Hey Steven, thanks for the reply. I could swear that Outlook used to return an error if this attachment size was too big. I wonder if this is a bug with Outlook instead of a setting on the mail server? Maybe something changed with a MS Office update? Is it an issue with the mail server being used and Outlook? Does it work with Exchange? Are the two just mis-communicating? It seems odd that the mail server wouldn't return an error if the attachment was to big. The mail server should do one of the following:

1. Accept the message and then bounce it for size limitations
2. Return an error that the email is too big.

With what I have seen so far at my other host and with the test I did with my Jodohost email, neither happens. The message just sits in the outbox, continually sending and never being delivered. I've searched for more info online but haven't found much relating to this type of situation with Outlook. Has anybody else tried this or had this problem? Any links explaining this issue further? Thanks!
 
I'm not sure what happens with the JodoHost mailserver, but if Outlook keeps trying, then either the mailserver is returning a temporary error code rather than a permanent one, or Outlook just sucks ;)
 
Hey SubSpace, thanks for the reply. Outlook may suck but unfortunately MS Office is the choice for most organizations and Outlook is the most widely supported email client chosen. I'd try to get my clients on Thunderbird or another client but doubt it would ever happen. Too much of a learning curve and I'm not their IT dept.

It seems like this would be a permanent error?! Especially if it never is delivered, should at least get a bounce message?
 
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