Weird Outlook attachment issue

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

In message , Paul in Houston TX
writes:
T wrote:
On 02/13/2018 01:19 AM, T wrote:
Hi All,

I got a call from a customer that whenever her boss sends out
and eMail with an attachment from Outlook (version unknown),
that the eMail will send out up to 20 times. With no
attachment, only once.
[]
Boy what a difference it makes to be "on site".
[]
2) the attachments with the issue had one thing in common:
they were large 10 MB to 18 MB.

On troubleshooting, I found that someone had put his Outlook's
"Schedule and automatic send/receive every" to 3 minutes.

A 18 MB attachment takes 25 minutes to send. (His Internet
needs an upgrade, which is my next call after I finish writing
this.) And every three minutes it would start over and resend
the guy.

I set it back to the default of 30 minutes.
[]
How interesting!
One to remember.

Indeed. And interesting to hear there are still cases where an 18M
attachment takes 25 minutes.

There are still users of dial-up services. Could be they aren't within
read of cable/DSL providers or cannot afford the expense of high speed
bandwidth.

18MB = 18 MB * 1,048,576 bytes/MB * 8 bits/byte = 150,994,944 bits

Dial-up might be, at best, 56 Mbps for a v.92 analog modem and using
only one instead of pairing them for double speed but at higher ISP cost
for 2 lines.

150,994,944 bits / 56000 bits/secong = 2,696 seconds = 45 minutes

If you don't believe me then go use a web site that calculates transfer
time (e.g., http://www.theaudioarchive.com/TAA_Resources_FTP.htm).

So, yes, that 18MB e-mail could take longer than 25 minutes. It will
take longer than the 30-minute polling interval that T changed for the
configuration of his customer's e-mail client. His customer should
*NOT* be attaching huge files to e-mails. E-mail has no resume. It has
no CRC validation. It is NOT a substitute for FTP or even HTTP for file
transfer. His customer should be uploading the file and then putting
the URL to the file in his e-mail. Sending huge e-mails to recipients
is rude (for reasons I mentioned in my other reply) and could be
considered malicious an [ignorant] attempt to DOS attack a recipient to
their e-mail service.

On 02/16/2018 05:29 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
To stop being rude to recipients, the sender should upload the huge file
to some online storage service.

Vanguard! The customer has no idea what or how big
the attachment is that he is sending. No idea
what a Megabyte is either. That is why he calls me.

I looked at the stuff he usually sends. It is typically
under a meg. These particular attachment were large
for some unknown reason. They were PDF and did not seem
to have anything unusual in them.

On 02/16/2018 05:41 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
There are still users of dial-up services.

I put those guys on one of the microwave services. They
are not the most reliable, but beat the hell out of dial up.

I have one lady that can only get dial up she is so
far out in the boonies. I looked out her window and
saw a tower. I asked her what it was. She said an
AT&T cell tower for the highway. Then I asked her
if her iPhone was through AT&T. It was. I showed
her how to use the iPhone's hot spot. She was
tickled. She had always wondered why she was paying
for a data plan or what it was.

Sometimes I hot them out of the ball park!

:-)

On 02/16/2018 04:56 PM, Paul in Houston TX wrote:


How interesting!
One to remember.


I only get called when the user (and his friends) can't
figure out the problem. All my calls are weird!
I live for the easy ones.

:'(

This is why nearly all the questions I ask all seem weird.
("Have you guys ever seen ...")

I roll with the punches.

The easiest trouble call I had was a woman that moved
her husbands computer to clean in the room. She called
me in a panic because it would not boot up. When I
got there, after checking all the cables out, it
transpired that she forgot to turn it back on.
I couldn't charge her. I was sworn to secrecy not
to tell her husband.

:-D

On Fri, 16 Feb 2018 17:49:24 -0800, T wrote:

On 02/16/2018 05:41 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
There are still users of dial-up services.

I put those guys on one of the microwave services. They
are not the most reliable, but beat the hell out of dial up.



They are also much better for reheating yesterday's leftover food.

On Fri, 16 Feb 2018 19:29:16 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

I never attach large files to my e-mails. That is rude to the
recipient. They may not want the large attachment, they don't want
senders wasting their bandwidth to get huge e-mails, they don't want to
wait for the large file transfer (e-mail is NOT a file transfer
protocol, especially since there is no resume or CRC), recipient's would
prefer to have a choice of if and when they retrieve a huge e-mails, and
sending huge e-mails could render a recipient's account dead in that
their disk quota got consumed and no further e-mails can be accepted
into their account until they clean it out.


As far as I'm concerned, attaching any file, regardless of its size,
to an e-mail message is rude. I never open them, unless they come from
someone who I know whose technical skills I trust.

You often see advice not to open attachments from people you don't
know. I think that that's one of the most dangerous pieces of advice
you see around, because it implies that it's safe to do the
opposite--open attachments from friends and relatives. But many
viruses spread by sending themselves to everyone in the infected
party's address book, so attachments received from friends are perhaps
the *most* risky to open.

Even if the attachment legitimately comes from a friend, it can
contain a virus. I'm not suggesting that a friend is likely to send
you a virus on purpose, but if the friend is infected without
realizing it, any attachment he sends you is likely to also be
infected.

Ken Blake wrote:
On Fri, 16 Feb 2018 19:29:16 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

I never attach large files to my e-mails. That is rude to the
recipient. They may not want the large attachment, they don't want
senders wasting their bandwidth to get huge e-mails, they don't want to
wait for the large file transfer (e-mail is NOT a file transfer
protocol, especially since there is no resume or CRC), recipient's would
prefer to have a choice of if and when they retrieve a huge e-mails, and
sending huge e-mails could render a recipient's account dead in that
their disk quota got consumed and no further e-mails can be accepted
into their account until they clean it out.


As far as I'm concerned, attaching any file, regardless of its size,
to an e-mail message is rude. I never open them, unless they come from
someone who I know whose technical skills I trust.

You often see advice not to open attachments from people you don't
know. I think that that's one of the most dangerous pieces of advice
you see around, because it implies that it's safe to do the
opposite--open attachments from friends and relatives. But many
viruses spread by sending themselves to everyone in the infected
party's address book, so attachments received from friends are perhaps
the *most* risky to open.

Even if the attachment legitimately comes from a friend, it can
contain a virus. I'm not suggesting that a friend is likely to send
you a virus on purpose, but if the friend is infected without
realizing it, any attachment he sends you is likely to also be
infected.

You're forgetting though, that some people use this
as a substitute for "sneakernet".

Instead of taking tonights "work at home" output back
to work on a USB stick, you just send an email to yourself
at work. (Using the version of ZIP with the crackable password.)

Paul

Paul wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:
On Fri, 16 Feb 2018 19:29:16 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

I never attach large files to my e-mails. That is rude to the
recipient. They may not want the large attachment, they don't want
senders wasting their bandwidth to get huge e-mails, they don't want to
wait for the large file transfer (e-mail is NOT a file transfer
protocol, especially since there is no resume or CRC), recipient's would
prefer to have a choice of if and when they retrieve a huge e-mails, and
sending huge e-mails could render a recipient's account dead in that
their disk quota got consumed and no further e-mails can be accepted
into their account until they clean it out.

As far as I'm concerned, attaching any file, regardless of its size,
to an e-mail message is rude. I never open them, unless they come from
someone who I know whose technical skills I trust.

You often see advice not to open attachments from people you don't
know. I think that that's one of the most dangerous pieces of advice
you see around, because it implies that it's safe to do the
opposite--open attachments from friends and relatives. But many
viruses spread by sending themselves to everyone in the infected
party's address book, so attachments received from friends are perhaps
the *most* risky to open.

Even if the attachment legitimately comes from a friend, it can
contain a virus. I'm not suggesting that a friend is likely to send
you a virus on purpose, but if the friend is infected without
realizing it, any attachment he sends you is likely to also be
infected.

You're forgetting though, that some people use this
as a substitute for "sneakernet".

Instead of taking tonights "work at home" output back
to work on a USB stick, you just send an email to yourself
at work. (Using the version of ZIP with the crackable password.)

Paul

E-mail has no guaranteed delivery nor does it ensure the MIME part (for
the attachment) did not get corrupted during transfer. You could send
an e-mail w/attachment to yourself from home, get to work, and find it
didn't get delivered or the attachment is corrupted. You could
digitally sign the e-mail but all that would tell you is if the e-mail
with its attachment had been altered during transfer. There is no
resume to e-mail. E-mail is a poor choice for sneakernet.

On 02/17/2018 10:48 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On Fri, 16 Feb 2018 17:49:24 -0800, T wrote:

On 02/16/2018 05:41 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
There are still users of dial-up services.

I put those guys on one of the microwave services. They
are not the most reliable, but beat the hell out of dial up.



They are also much better for reheating yesterday's leftover food.


I wonder if you were working on the antenna and had
a candy bar in your pocket, if it would melt it?

:-)