Email - When NOT to use it

by David Basden

With the explosion of the Internet commercially in Australia, you would be amazed at the number of companies both in Australia, and around the world that can be accessed via the Internet and Email. Many people now find it is easier to get a message to someone via Email than the old phone or fax. No getting stuck on hold, no more hassles with their fax machine running out of paper in the middle of their night, and a lower phone bill as well.

The problem
The Electronic Mail systems across the world, run on systems that have one main purpose, efficiently sending text messages from point A to point B, and they do it very well, so long as the file is not much bigger than this article, for example.

Unfortunately, many people across the globe are merrily trying to send files via E-mail using 'Attachments', or by 'UUEncoding'. These methods (and other ones such as BinHex) all work on the same principle, they change the file into text so it can be sent by Email, which enlarges the file size by two to three times!

So, you ask, what is the problem with that?

Firstly, some of the older mail handlers across the world are limited to transmitting messages of no more than 64k. (The actual file should be less than 30k, remember it at least doubles when sent via email.) Anything greater than this will bring down the server, causing major problems for administrators. The flow of email to the entire site will be interrupted until someone has manually removed the offending message and restarted the system.

Secondly, the time to transmit the file can take seriously longer than necessary and that's a waste of resources your time, your machine's time and the receiving machine's time too.

Sending a file via Email because it was urgent, is pretty dumb anyway, because it would take 2 to 3 times longer to get there.

Lastly, the cost. Many sites in Australia are charged for the amount of data that is sent across their network. Transmitting a file via email would cost to the receiver 2 to 3 times as much. That would make anyone pretty unhappy.

The solution
Luckily, there is a solution to this tale of woe.

The accepted way of transmitting files, of any size, across the Internet. It's called FTP, which stands for File Transfer Protocol and pretty well everywhere supports it. It's fast, efficient and most importantly, can send files without increasing their size.

If you run your Internet software under Windows you could use CuteFTP (for example, there are others) which uses an interface similar to File Manager. It makes sending files via FTP no harder than copying a file.

If you have any questions about either sending jobs to us, or about email in general, just send us mail at bureau@typetamer.com.au, or call us on (09)249-2972.