JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, S.C. –
Email can be an effective way to distribute information to people quickly. This can be good and bad. For users who use it properly, it's a means of getting a message out, but when users attach large files to their emails and send it to large groups, the servers that send our emails can become clogged and prevent others from sending and receiving.
"For us, our servers are in Scott Air Force Base, Ill. and our users are here in Charleston, so when you send an email it goes to Scott, it's sorted by the server and sent to the users here," explained Master Sgt. Joe Helfrich, 628th Communications Squadron cyber operations section chief. "For emails that are five megabytes or smaller that's not a problem, but when people send larger files like Power Points to large groups of people, it creates a denial of service on ourselves and depending on the size of the email and group it's being sent to, the server can be backed up anywhere from one to three days."
As an alternative to sending large files, Airmen can post information to the Electronic Information Management Site and send the link to where they posted this information to their desired recipients. This allows them to transmit the information to large groups of people without causing denial of service to other users across the base.
"If you put it on the EIM and send people a link, you've gotten your information to people just as if you attached it as an email only without blocking the server," said Helfrich.
To prevent clogging the servers, users should keep in mind the size of their email and how many people they want to send it to.
"Most individuals can send 10 megabyte emails to one or two people occasionally and it usually won't cause a problem, but for large groups you don't want to send out anything that's bigger than five megabytes," said Helfrich.
For more information or questions regarding how to use EIM for sharing large files, contact the 628th Communications Squadron Help Desk at DSN 963-2666.