In response to customer requests, Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) has raised mail file size limits from 15 megabytes (MB) to 50 MB per file during weekdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The change went into effect on March 1. The existing 100 MB limit for evenings and weekends has not changed. The mail file size includes both the text of the message and any attachments. Keep in mind that the size of an attachment inside a mail file is often larger than the size of the attachment on the computer.

Note two important items: 1) Every Cornell e-mail account holder has a 300 MB quota on mailboxes, so it will only take six mail files, instead of 20, to fill a mailbox. 2) Cornell account holders may experience time-outs when sending large files over slow connections (such as dial-up).

For more information, visit http://www.cit.cornell.edu/email/emailfaq.html#attachsize.

Traffic Control: CIT installs newest spam defense

CIT continues its efforts to reduce the amount of spam that reaches Cornell e-mail users by integrating its newest spam defense, MailChannels's Traffic Control. CIT began testing Traffic Control late last year and determined that Traffic Control assists PureMessage, CIT's anti-spam/anti-virus software, by reducing the amount of spam that Cornell servers have to process.

Traffic Control works with existing e-mail infrastructure as part of a layered approach to security. According to the MailChannels Web site, http://www.mailchannels.com, Traffic Control uses reputation and behavior information to selectively allocate network and server resources to e-mail senders -- leading to a dramatic reduction in wasteful and harmful e-mail traffic.

Thus, when high-volume or poorly behaved sites (for example, spammers) send e-mail to Cornell, Traffic Control responds by slowing down the speed of their e-mail traffic. CIT does have the ability to reinstate any site or domain so that its e-mail comes in full speed.

CIT is currently in the process of installing Traffic Control on all external mail servers.