We've increased the maximum size of an e-mail message from 8MB to 20MB. This new figure matches that of many large commercial operators, both in South Africa and internationally.

Please note that this is the maximum total size of an e-mail message, not the maximum size of a file attachment. The size includes all attachments, any text body of the message and headers. The size of attachments is measured after encoding takes place (encoding can add up to 50% to the size). The 20MB limit will typically mean you can send approximately 13MB worth of attachments on any e-mail.

Users should be aware that they may need to increase the timeout values set in their mail clients in order to send large messages. It typically takes about two minutes for the mail server to process a 20MB message before accepting it.

Remember that, although the limit at Rhodes is now 20MB, there are no guarentees that every remote site will accept 20MB mail messages.