Someone finally pulled out the math for the full message size limit formula.

So in case any of you were interested in that topic a week ago, here it is:

> Simon White wrote:
> > 27-Jan-03 at 16:51, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote :
> > >
> > > the 15.5MB file in fact was 22MB. smtp seems to produce a nice large
> > > overhead.
> >
> > No, it's Base64 encoding that creates overhead. All email actually
> > happens in ASCII...
> >
> > 15.5*4/3 = 20.66 + headers and suchlike will bring it up to around 21,
> > 22 Meg.
> >
> The 'exact' formula would be to add additional cr/lf for every 40 encoded
> bytes, which would result in:
> enc_size = orig_size * 4 / 3 + orig_size / 20
> which equals to
> enc_size = orig_size * 1.383
>
> I've found that using a base64 multiplier of 1.4 mostly fits, and
personally
> use 1.5 for calculating the message_size_limit parameter.
>
> 15.5 * 1.4 = 21.7 MB estimated encoded size
> 15.5 * 1.5 = 23.25 MB estimated message_size_limit to let it go through.
>
> Thomas
>

As usual, they forgot to mention that 1MB = 2^20.  If you enter your
message_size_limit in bytes this is a very important thing.

To expand the calculation for this:

Estimated encoded size:
15.5 * 1.4 = 21.7 MB = 22754100

Estimated message_size_limit to let it go through:
15.5 * 1.5 = 23.25 MB = 24379392

--Eric


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