Attachment size not calculated correctly

[Paul_S]

I have a 16MB file (16,372,963 bytes) that I am emailing my self as a test. I sent it from Gmail and from outlook.com to my work address. It goes through a Fortimail system and then hits Exchange server 2010 SP3.

The email is always rejected with this error:

This message wasn't delivered to anyone because it's too large. The limit is 19 MB. This message is 21 MB.

I have a support ticket open already, but wanted to share in the forums too.

Have you ever seen this?

[Bromont_FTNT]

When you attach a binary file to an e-mail, the base64 encoding (convert binary to ascii) inflates the size by about 30% so this is normal.

[Paul_S]

Bromont wrote:

When you attach a binary file to an e-mail, the base64 encoding (convert binary to ascii) inflates the size by about 30% so this is normal.

the file was just a text file. do you think the email communications are treating it as binary any ways?

[emnoc]

I have to agreed with bromont. Gmail is probably adding data with the encoding. Try this

Use dd and make a dummy file

e.g

dd if=/dev/random bs=1k of=9meg count=9000 9000+0 records in 9000+0 records out 9216000 bytes transferred in 0.871187 secs (10578671 bytes/sec)

forgot to add, i believe gmail encode text as base64 and that will also increase the file size

e.g

echo "" > echo

openssl enc -base64 < echo > echo.64

And if you compare the file, you will a size increase.

Now use a UUENCODE Online and you will see all file encoded are increased insize

http://www.webutils.pl/index.php?idx=uu

 12902422  9meg.uue

   9216000   9meg