Technics: Net software: Large attachments split from message by new Pando

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Technology Evangelist carries a feature by Benjamin Higginbotham, "Pando: A Better Way to Send Large Email Attachments" that pinpoints two areas where email desperately requires upgrading: "file attachments and user authentication. I can’t fix user authentication today, but a product called Pando can fix the problems with attachments."

I can testify to the user authentication problem, as refWrite's publisher has had his name exploited by a notorious character, DrFraud, who used it to make a Yahoo address and then sent a hideous poison-pen email maligning friends to a major Christian institution, and putting refWrite's publisher's name below the signoff "Yours in Christ."

But that's not what Higgie can help us with. He's focussed on the large attachments issue.

E-mail servers like to have text messages sent back and forth. As soon as a user sends a 10MB file, an image for example, it bogs down the servers on both ends, increases the size of the message storage and slows the process of getting new messages for the recipient as their system tries to download the massive attachment.

The solution is to split the message into two parts. When I compose a message that has a 10MB file attached to it and hit send, the text part goes to the e-mail server while the attachment goes to a file server. The recipient would not see a file in the message like they do today, rather they would see a link to the file just like a link to a web site. By splitting the message into two parts the E-mail server does not need to store and process a huge file and the recipient does not have to download a massive file to get the rest of their messages. This is the best case solution. It’s transparent to both the sender and recipient. No special e-mail program is used, the e-mail client knows how to split the messages and where to send each, and so it just works.

I don’t know how to get that best case scenario today, but Pando.com gets us really close. Install the Pando client on your Windows based PC or Macintosh, and using the client you can send a message with up to a 1000MB attachment (that’s 1GB). The attachment will go to their file server while the message will simply have the link to the file. This is fantastic.

TechNotes, by Owlie Scowlie

What Pando does not do today is integrate directly into my Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird or Mail.app applications from the sender side but it does look like they are working on getting direct Outlook support soon.

Ugh! Perhaps the worst of the lot!

Unfortunately this service requires the recipient to also have Pando installed. I believe the solution would be much more powerful if Pando simply embedded a link into the message without requiring any special software. A simple web browser would be a great tool to download. Pando gets us close, but not all the way to the grand attachment vision above.

The reason that Pando requires a special app on the receiving end is that the whole system uses a p2p type model. The advantage of this is that the recipient can start downloading the file before the sender is done uploading, making the time required in the whole process much smaller than it could be. The other advantage is that bandwidth can be shared between the sender and receiving party. This helps keep costs low if not free. I would like to see a system where rather than placing a .pando file in the recipients e-mail, it's a hyperlink that the recipient can click on. This link would open a page that would try and detect a Pando install. If Pando is installed the download would start right away. If Pando is not installed the file would download right in the browser. If the file was not done uploading then the user would have the option to wait for the file or to download Pando to start the x-fer ( = transfer) right away.

By using Pando today I’m able to get 1/2 way to my vision of splitting the message from the attachment. Hopefully soon they will have their Outlook plugin which will make the process almost transparent to both sides. I would really like to seea Thunderbird, Outlook Express and Mail.app plugin as well. It would also be nice if Pando sold server software that an IT department could install on a box next to their mail server. This would allow users inside the building to take advantage of the service without having to use external bandwidth and it should be a lot faster.

For now Pando is in beta but I have found that it works great. If you’re constantly sending messages with large attachments (anything over 1MB in my opinion), do your IT team or E-mail admin a favor... Download and try Pando. They will thank you for it!

About that authentication matter, Higgie trivializes the matter by using the word "spoofing" -

E-mail is an interesting creature. Originally designed for text only this beast has grown out of control with users spoofing names, attachments in excess of 10MB and just plain abuse of the system.

"Spoofing names" gives a lite-hearted quality to the matter, and there must be many occasions lite-heartedness is the name of the game of using someone else's name as an email address (best sent to the person herself / himself); but I would avoid it altogether. Why? Because there's the more usual case where malice is the intention of the serious non-spoofer. What's the correct word for a DrFraud name-abuse email address? Whatever it is, it's hate mail.

Tags: Pando for large email attachments

• technics
• software
• servers
• email
• emailauthentication
• attachmentslrge