On 28 Dec 2001, at 16:36, Cesar Mendoza wrote:

> My PC can't send long email messages. If I send a short message
> everything works fine, but if the message is long then a 0x800CCC0F
> or time out error occurs. Now for the strange part. When I
> configure my email account in my father's PC I can send long emails
> normally. Both my father and I are using WinME with Outlook 2000,
> I've also tried configuring outlook express in my machine and that
> doesn't work. I don't have another email software to try but since
> I can send long emails from my father's machine I can be sure that
> it's not a server problem. I have already uninstalled and
> reinstalled both Outlook 2000 and Outlook express on my machine,
> that does not work either.

  Are your machine and your father's connected to the Internet the
same way?

  One of the adjustable parameters in TCP/IP is the MTU (Maximum
Transmission Unit), the largest amount of data that can be sent in a
single packet.  On a dial-up PPP connection, this is typically about
450 bytes or so.  On a LAN connection, it's usually about 1500 bytes.
  Because DSL connects via an Ethernet LAN card (NIC - Network
Interface Card), it typically defaults to the same 1500 number.  The
problem is that some DSL providers use PPPoE (PPP over Ethernet) to
provide DSL access, and that needs about 10 bytes of additional
overhead....

  So my theory is that when you send short messages, they are able to
be sent as a single packet less than about 1450 bytes in size.  But
when you try to send a longer message, it gets split up into packets
of (MTU) size, which is currently a bit more than the connection will
actually allow.

  (I've seen similar problems with FTP, where short messages
travelled okay but long files did not, and this is what it turned out
to be....)

  Exactly how to adjust the MTU setting varies from one Windows
version to another, but it's generally found under the "Network" icon
in the Control Panel.  There are also third-party utilities which can
be used to set this parameter.

David Gillett

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