Like most Internet Service Providers, ITS limits the size of e-mail attachments. The size of an attachment you can send or receive from your Albany e-mail account depends on which e-mail system you’re using:

Exchange (using Outlook or Outlook Web Access) – 10 megabytes (50 megabytes if you are sending to another Exchange user on campus)
Unix mail (using a mail client eg. Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Eudora) – 10 megabytes
Unix mail (using the UAlbany Webmail interface) – 5 megabytes*

Most e-mail servers are set up to exclude large attachments because they create a high volume of network traffic and can easily fill an Inbox. By restricting their size, attachments can be delivered quickly and successfully. Here is a sample of size limitations from some popular Internet Service Providers:

Yahoo – 10 megabytes
Hotmail – 10 megabytes
Gmail – 20 megabytes
AOL – 16 megabytes
Mail services in educational (.edu) institutions – 2-25 megabytes

* The Webmail interface uses significantly more resources than a typical mail client when sending an attachment. In order to conserve resources on this multi-user system, a lower (5 megabytes) attachment size limit is set.