Question..please help resolve this arguement. 1

[BradSQLGuy]

Hi! I have been arguing with my co-worker about this and I'd like a second opinion. We have remote users getting e-mail with a dial up connection through our Exchange Server. Rarely we have users say that their Outlook freezes on them when trying to get their e-mail. My co-worker says that if they are receiving an attachment then it sends it to the user therefore taking a long time for Outlook to open. My arguement is that my understanding is Exchange will only send the body of the e-mail and not all the attachments. Then if a user wants to open the attachment it THEN pulls it off the server and saves to the hard drive or opens from it's location.

The reason this makes more sense to me is because if a user gets 100 text e-mails and 30 of them have 2MB attachments then using a dial up connection you can see it could take a user hours and hours just to view thier e-mail. If the server actually pushes the attachments to the user I'd think we'd see more then just a few people having problems getting e-mails remotely. Can someone give me your opinion on this?

Thanks in advance for any replies. -Brad
A+, MCSE NT4, MCDBA SQL7

-Best cartoon of all time :-D 'Spongebob Squarepants' :-D

 

[brontosaurus]

You're right Brad, and if you need proof, here's how you can test it. Once a remote user has opened his Outlook session, open up a mail that has an attachment, and Double click the attachment. IF that attachment had already been "delivered" to the local machine, there would be no network activity as a result of opening it. But, as you'll plainly see, the dial-up connectoid will be going crazy transferring data over the pipe. Aside from that, your logic about opening the mailbox is also valid. Your users would be calling you every name in the book as they sat and waited for that mailbox to open. What's actually happening during that wait time is not a download of the actual mailbox data, rather it's Outlook indexing all of the mailbox components...

 

[BradSQLGuy]

Thanks Bronto :-D -Brad
A+, MCSE NT4, MCDBA SQL7

-Best cartoon of all time :-D 'Spongebob Squarepants' :-D

 

[yizhar]

HI.

Few tips for remote email access:

* You should educate the users to keep a small inbox folder and to remove items from it.

* If the user is using MS Outlook - configure it to work offline and synchronize from time to time, or to use a local PST and pool new mail only. With the first suggestion (work offline OST) the messages are kept on the server for backup.

* There are some other alternatives like:
Using the IMAP protocol (can be done Outlook Express client). Simply add a mail account using IMAP at the client and you see the advantages of it.
Outlook Web Access can also be used. With OWA you only download attachments when you ask for them.

Bye

Yizhar Hurwitz

http://come.to/yizhar

http://teachers.sivan.co.il/yizhar

 

[Hungster]

Yes yizhar said a good point,
i have all my users using OWA when they are out about

it works beautifully

 

[Kellyjames]

Erm guys.. Hate to dare say it, but this argument is dead. xDSL is here and everyone will have 2meg to their home PC by 2004, and POP3 protocol will be consigned to where it belongs.

KJ