On Sun, 12 Dec 1999, Dick St.Peters wrote:
stpete> > > > > But how large is too large?
stpete> > > > I imposed a 5 MB limit here after someone sent a single message of more
stpete>
stpete> The Internet's bandwidth-blessed elite should keep in mind that the
stpete> vast bulk of Internet users does not share their good fortune or the
stpete> values that depend on it.
I think the question has been expanded into 'How large is too large for
who?'. On one hand, you have the 'bandwidth-blessed elite' and on the
other hand you have the 'megabit-challenged' (ie, modem users).
Having worked for an Australian ISP with the comparitively high costs of
bandwidth (per megabyte received), anything over 1meg starts getting
worrying for dialup users.
The main problem, from the (AU) ISP perspective, is user perceptions. The
Internet is there, waiting to be (ab)used, by their perspective, and so
some users get rather irate at having their ISP arbitarily reject messages
over a certain size.
The ISP, on the other hand, knows from bitter experience that any message
over a certain size is unable to be downloaded by the average user, and
prefer not to pay for receiving the message, only to not recoup any
charges from it. (ie, the user eventually requests the message be deleted
unread or the local tech support jumps through hoops getting it to the
user).
If you have significant dialup users, reject anything over 10meg (politely
of course). If you do not have any dialup users, 100meg seems quite
adequate for the moment. Your local administrative policies would also
come into play (ie, just why is user suchnsuch subscribed to
Playboy-in-brown-MIME-encoding at their work address? etc)
However, this is more a matter for the DRUMS (?) list which I'm sure
someone will provide the details for shortly.
--
Bruce Campbell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Not speaking for my employer
Systems Administrator Regional Internet Registry
Asia Pacific Network Information Centre For the Asia Pacific Region
