September 23, 1996
Attack of the Killer E-Mail
By Bob O'Donnell
Junk e-mail has justifiably been singled out recently as a blight on Internet
communications, but there's a potentially larger problem brewing with Internet e-mail that
users may unknowingly begin inflicting upon themselves and their company's e-mail systems:
daily Internet content delivery.
A number of Internet-related firms, but most prominently Netscape Communications Corp. with version 3.0 of
Navigator, have announced services that will allow users to have complete HTML pages from
different content providers delivered straight to their e-mail boxes every morning. The
appeal of such a service or feature is fairly obvious. But it seems that little thought
has been put into the havoc that these potentially enormous messages might cause with
corporate e-mail systems.
For example, Netscape's InBox Direct feature, which was trumpeted in the announcements
surrounding the release of Navigator 3.0, will soon let users receive in a Netscape
mailbox complete HTML pages from many different publications, including The New York
Times and magazines published by Times Mirror magazines (such as Golf and Sporting
News). Even if the user chose only a few content sources, this feature could easily
create several hundred kilobyte, if not several megabyte, messages for each user, every
day.
Unfortunately, Netscape offers no method for limiting the size of the resulting
messages, so IS managers could be facing clogged networks, as well as mail servers and
Internet gateways crumbling under the weight of this new mail. (Interestingly, the Mail
Server Netscape introduced as a part of Suite Spot apparently also lacks controls for
limiting the size of incoming messages -- this could be a double whammy for Netscape
shops.)
Several other content broadcast mechanisms, most notably PointCast, have already been banned from some
companies because of the traffic demands they place on company networks. (And to its
credit, PointCast has acknowledged some of these problems and is working on reducing
traffic overhead.) Without some kind of controls being put in, I'm afraid features like
Netscape's InBox Direct and other similar services may also face corporate prohibitions.
Robust mail servers may be able to handle these killer e-mails without breaking a
sweat, but I think these types of content-delivery systems are going to face a rocky
future at many companies. That's too bad, because I think these types of features offer a
promising glimpse into the information systems of the future.
On an unrelated note, I'd like to welcome a new column into the InfoWorld Electric
fold. Loose
Cables, an Electric-only column, is produced by members of the Network Solutions Team:
leader Scott Mace; analysts Brooks Tally, Bryan Chua, Carl Fischer, Andy Nelson, and Anne
Kaliczak; and editors Holly Blumenthal and John Broderick. The column, which debuts today,
will offer commentary on network-related issues and problems, with a specific insight into
the testing process for networking products. This week they talk about problems with
acronyms and Windows NT 4.0 bugs. We’re glad to have them here on Electric and hope
you enjoy their work.
©
Copyright 1996, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a
subsidiary of IDG Communications, Inc. Reprinted from InfoWorld,
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