Email Message Size Limit Change
We will be changing the size limit of the email message you can send at a time to 10MB each.
Why set a message size limit?
- Performance: Large mails take longer to go through SPAM filtering and virus scanning, and this impacts the overall performance of the email service.
- Denial of service attacks: With inadequate message size limits, a hacker can implement a denial of service attack more easily by sending messages with large attachments, ultimately using all available resources on the Exchange servers, thereby causing system failure.
- Recipient organization restrictions: Other organizations are also imposing attachment size limits for performance and capacity planning issues; therefore, the likelihood of intended recipients at other organizations being unable to receive large mails is increasing.
- Inconvenience to mobile users: Users of laptops and other mobile devices who are working away from the campus can become very frustrated by the length of time it takes to download large messages, especially when they have received no prior warning. Alternative methods of file transfer allow the recipient to choose a convenient time to download the file.
Why is the limit set at 10MB?
- Microsoft recommends 10MB for all customers, and 10MB is the default within their system.
- The system has been designed to perform well with a 10MB limit, and we believe that the vast majority of business attachments would fit easily within this limit.
Examples of attachment sizes
- 5KB - An average email message.
- 140KB - Email Best Practice (MS Word): 8 pages.
- 838KB - Email Project Senior Manager briefing (PowerPoint presentation): 19 slides, mainly text with a few images.
- 1.7MB - Adobe PDF: 190 pages, lots of tables and some images.
- 10.2MB - Presentation (PowerPoint presentation): 46 slides, all full color, lots of images (b&w and color), some animation, some sound.
Alternative means of sharing large files
- Compressing or zipping large files, especially documents, spreadsheets and presentations, can bring their size down to below the 10MB limit.
- MediaCast is a digital resource library to provide efficient and secure access to a variety of materials, especially streaming video files. You can record and encode live lectures, demonstrations, and laboratories; upload these video/audio files to MediaCAST; and then paste a URL link to the materials on a message or in ANGEL
- Use the free website available like YouTube (video sharing) and/or Shutterfly (photo sharing).
Approved by President's Cabinet 5/12/09.