[AusNOG] Current "Best Practice" WRT email size

[Andrew McN]

On 26/11/15 15:00, Mark Newton wrote:
> On Nov 26, 2015, at 2:33 PM, andrew at mcnaughty.com wrote:
>> Two things.  Firstly, when you send via SMTP, the MUA will typically send twice,  to the SMTP server, then to the sent mail folder via IMAP.  
> 
> Well, no. The MUA has usually already sent the mail to the Drafts folder before the user hits “Send”. When the user hits send, that same file is moved to the Outbox folder; When the MTA indicates success, it’s moved to the Sent folder.

That seems plausible, but presumably dependent on your MUA.  It's not
what I generally see with Thunderbird, but then I'm probably not usually
waiting long before sending, so it doesn't usually get saved to drafts.

If the user is putting a dropbox link in their email rather than a n
attachment, then the IMAP bandwidth is saved, regardless of whether it's
to drafts or sent mail folder, and it may be saving that traffic more
than once if the draft is saved more than once.

This leads me to wonder if the IMAP protocol allows for saving changed
message text without having to retransmit the attachments?  What about
if it's just the 'Date' header changing when the email is finally sent?

Regards,
Andrew McNaughton