For large gaming files.. what Internet Service works best?

[Louie the Toad]

I dumped Juno and am ready to do the same with MSN 8. Some of my pbem files are over 1.7 MB and MSN can't handle them. (Huge maps, fog, lots of units).

What works well?

Long download... Toad

[BigDork]

I use myrealbox. Their limit on files is not an issue, I believe it's like 7.5m or something like that. The only things you have to deal with are server downtime every once and a while(It's a testbed for Novell NetMail) while the do software upgrades and whatnot and that you need a valid non-webmail e-mail address to sign up.

Another thing is right now they are having issues with the SoBig worm. I am having trouble sending e-mails because I cannot connect to the SMTP server, it usually has too many connections. But if you keep trying it usually sends after a few tries. But that should be fixed in a couple days(I hope).

edit: Another thing you could do is use a program like WinZip to zip the file before sending those big ones. Just make sure your opponent can unzip it.

[ August 26, 2003, 12:48 AM: Message edited by: BigDork ]

[86smopuim]

Originally posted by Louie the Toad:

I dumped Juno and am ready to do the same with MSN 8. Some of my pbem files are over 1.7 MB and MSN can't handle them. (Huge maps, fog, lots of units).

What works well?

Long download... Toad

Give me a vector victor.

Are u in the pacific northwest by any chance?

If so, go with blarg.net.

[Zebulon Pleasure Beast]

In the few PBEMs I've played, we handled turn exchange via FTP, nice and clean.

[Hans]

You can also set up an account with a company like Mydocs. This allows non-email movement of files without difficulty - of large size

[Monty]

Or use M$ Messenger, you can send files directly when both are online.

Monty

[WWB]

Easy way is to have a 2nd computer running win2000 or XP and run SMTP services on that. Then there is no limit.

WWB

[dieseltaylor]

No don't zip. There is a thread somewhere explaining that though it looks smaller on your hard drive and as an attachment it then gets converted to Ascii to be sent over the net which makes it larger than the original CMBB/BO file you started with. At the other end it goes back to being zipped size but you physically sent a larger file.

[Phemur]

We've run into this problem before, so what I've done is setup a small website where registered players can upload and download their turns.

Players click on "Upload Turn" on the page and a dialog comes up to allow them to browse and pick their file. Players also have to identify their opponent.

When the opponent opens the site up in the browser, they can click on "Pending Turns" to see what turns are waiting for them. They can either download the turn or delete them.

It's work in progress, but it's working ok for our little club so far. The only disadvantage is diskspace. My hosting provider only allows 500mb of disk space, which could get used up pretty quick if a lot of players use the service.

We only use this system as a back up when email fails, so it hasn't been an issue.

Take a look:

http://cm.asl-forums.net

Click enter, then click on the Members tab on the navigation bar. You *must* be registered to use this functionality. Once registered, options will appear in the member menu bar on the right.

Phemur

[KG_Cloghaun]

I use outlook express w/my provider comcast.net. Outlook express is excellent. Also, using winzip or winace to compress files helps a rgeat deal.

[WWB]

Originally posted by KG_Cloghaun:

I use outlook express w/my provider comcast.net. Outlook express is excellent. Also, using winzip or winace to compress files helps a rgeat deal.

Outlook Express might be excellent at spreading viruses. Aside from that it borders on useless.

CM pbem files dont compress much, if any, using zip because they are encrypted or somefink. Zip does help with integrety by making sure text-based mail systems dont step all over the files.

That file upload exchange is pretty nifty.

WWB

[dieseltaylor]

Please believe me about NO to zipping

Found the thread in CMBO

Here's a preview of an article:

quote:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

--

Why not to zip/compress PBEM moves

To understand the issue, you have to know that practically all

email transportation on the internet is done in ASCII form, not binary

form. The protocol SMTP, which is used for all normal email

transportation on the internet requires it, and the protocols pop3 and

imap which often deliver the mails to the enduser aren't any better.

The PBEM file as generated by Combat Mission is an ASCII file. The

actual data that CMBO uses is binary, but for your convenience it

wraps it into ASCII. The data before being converted to ASCII is

already compressed (in fact it is encrypted and then compressed), so

what your really have is binary CMBO data which is first compressed

and then made into ASCII.

If you zip such a CMBO move, it gets smaller:

size filename

990023 nordic-cbg-rwolf056.txt*

749052 nordic-cbg-rwolf056.zip

That's nice, it saves 25% - while resting on your harddrive that is.

However, if you actually mail the zipfile, your mailer is

converting it to ASCII again. A zipfile is not ASCII, it is binary,

that means any value a byte can have mixed freely. The usual email

protocols don't allow real binary to be transported since they are too

braindead to tell the extend of the file then, among other protocol

weaknesses. So your mailer ensures that everything is ASCII.

Everything - if it isn't ASCII to start from, it converts it to ASCII,

without mentioning it to you and the reader's mailer converts it back,

again it goes without saying.

That means the original CMBO file is transported as-is, but the

zipfile is converted first.

So what does the conversion to ASCII look like? There are two

methods in common use - uuencode and base64. Base64 is a little more

efficient so it is in use in most mailers today. Still, although

base64 does the best job it can, it operational requirements are

pretty limited. It has to wrap everything in the few "real" ASCII

chars (not counting umlauts and stuff) and it inserts newlines to make

it look like a real formatted text.

So what is the size for uuencode (*.uue) and base64 (*.base64)?

990023 nordic-cbg-rwolf056.txt

749052 nordic-cbg-rwolf056.zip

1026480 nordic-cbg-rwolf056.zip.base64

1032068 nordic-cbg-rwolf056.zip.uue

As you can see, the ASCII conversion did not only eat up the zip

advantage, it made things worse.

And that is natural. The original CMBO file is already a

compressed file before it was turned into text, and compressing a

compressed (or encrypted) file again will make it bigger (unless the

first compressor was exceptionally braindead). The zipping of the

original file could do some compression because it squeezed out the

ASCII wrapper of the CMBO file, but when you later add a new ASCII

wrapper for email transportation, you get the overhead that is natural

when compressing already compressed files. You gained nothing from

first compressing an ASCII wrapper or to re-wrap later, and on top of

gaining nothing there you have two compression overheads and

uneliminated traces of the first ASCII wrapper which you don't even

use anymore.

Attachment damage

People frequently zip PBEM file to overcome email size limitations. As

we have seen, that is nonsense.

But often people zip PBEM files because they find the text

attachment is damaged while being transported, but zipfile attachments

are being transported OK.

That is a result of bad providers trying to convert text

attachments (the CMBO file looks like a text attachment) "for your

convenience" and getting it wrong. New linebreaks, character

conversions, splitting etc. is all deadly for CMBO files. Frequently

these providers do not touch declared zipfile attachments, but

declared text attachments. You original CMBO file is being transported

with a declaration of being a textfile.

This is all fine, but the only answer is to dump the provider and

get a decent one. This is in no way acceptable. Your emails have to be

transported as-is, with no modification except the required envelope

changes on SMTP transportation. Get a new provider instead of

switching to zipfiles which causes more work for everyone and makes

the actual transmitted emails bigger.

So you really want it small?

If you really want these 25% reduction to apply, because you pay big

bugs my megabyte or your throughput is very low, you can do that by

not using email. It requires direct connections (both sides dialed

up), unless you have a third-party server to place stuff at.

Use a protocol like ftp or HTTP. Install a small webserver, place

the move there and let the other guy get it with his/her browser or

automated tool. ftp allows two-way getting and placing, but transmits

password in clear - do not use important passwords and shut down the

service after use. If you want something decent, get an implementation

of the ssh client and server. Then use their scp program or their

secure ftp replacement.

I have to remind you that a Windows machine with any recent version

of Internet Exploder allows anyone to do anything on your machine

(including password snarfing) anyway

And it don't want people to say that I am overly negative, but what

can you do with these providers and Microsoft and awful Hollywood

movies...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

--

Hope that helps. I find that PBEMhelper sends and recieves files outside of the bwowser. Very slick at keeping multple games straight. You can set it up to boot your game when a file is received. Regrettable none of my current opponents are familiar with it

[WWB]

[RANT Warning]

Uhm, yeah. What redwolf writes is factually correct, but essentially irrelevent:

1) People are not generally paying for bandwith, save the poor souls with dialup who pay with time. And for those who do pay, unless they are playing 16 monster PBEMs a month, a little extra file-size will not hurt appreciably.

2) Changing email providers (and by default email address) is a royal pain in the arse. And there is no garuntee that their system will not garble text attachments. Add that to the fact that the email client has more to do with the attachment format in most cases.

3) Everyone has zip of one sort or another. Zip is easy to use. Zip does not require things like port 80 being open. Nor does zip require one to setup a secure FTP or HTTP server. Zip attachments dont get garbled, even if they are a bit larger in transit. On an average broadband connection one would be hard pressed to see the difference in most cases.

So, zip might not be economical, ISP's email systems suck, and all the l33t people have FTP servers anyhow. But zip works almost all the time while remaining accessable to everyone.

[/RANT]

WWB

[lucero1148]

Back to what to use as far as sending out PBEM try either Yahoo or netscape mail services. Both are free services with Yahoo giving you 6MB's and Netscape a 5MB mailbox. Both allow you to attach files up to 3MB's in size and I regularly send files from 1 to 1.8MB in size. The largest so far has been 2.4MB. So if you're looking for cheap and easy to use try those.

All best

Patrick

[Other Means]

to prevent the ISP being "helpfull" ISTM that it would make sense to rename a file to a .zip extension without actually zipping it. therefore the ASCII conversion won't take place & there will be no tampering with the file.

[Soddball]

I use NamePlanet. You have to pay, but it's largely spam-free, has 10MB of web space, and runs all my PBEM turns without complaint, either in Zip or Txt format. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than hotmail.

[WWB]

Originally posted by Other Means:

to prevent the ISP being "helpfull" ISTM that it would make sense to rename a file to a .zip extension without actually zipping it. therefore the ASCII conversion won't take place & there will be no tampering with the file.

Not really. A text file is a text file, no matter what the extension. When you attach a binary, like a zip, to an email, your mail software encodes it.

WWB