Changes between Version 4 and Version 5 of Transferring Large Data

Timestamp:

08/28/06 17:48:03 (20 years ago)

Author:

dkg@…

Comment:

--

Transferring Large Data

@@ -20 +20 @@
 ticket #230 also suggests using an `.htaccess` file to require a password before downloading data.  While that ticket is open, this feature is not available in the CAL web servers.  It is also not cryptographically sound: any machine on the various networks between the web server and the receipient can intercept that data and copy it (and can intercept the password used in an unencrypted http session for that matter).  This authentication could be a useful additional layer of security for ultra-top-secret data, however.
 
-== why using E-mail is a bad idea ==
+== why using E-mail for binary or large data is a bad idea ==
 
-E-mail is generally an inappropriate method of transfer for data larger than a megabyte or two, or non-textual data.  There are several reasons for this:
+E-mail is generally an inappropriate method of transfer for data larger than a megabyte or two, or for non-text data.  There are several reasons for this:
 
  * '''mime-encoding transfer inflation:''' Base64 encodings (your best bet for arbitrary binary data transmission via e-mail) inflate the size of your data by an additional 33%.  Yes, transfer is relatively cheap these days, but there's no reason to pad everything we do with an extra third again, especially for larger data sets.  Does that 600MB data set really need to be a 1GB transfer?