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Available in Advanced Outbound Rules only.
Surefire Delivery is the technology MailRules uses to move large and ungainly files through the relatively small portals that exist in the Internet e-mail system.
In any delivery of e-mail messages over the internet there are many potential bottlenecks for messages between you and your intended recipients:
Examples of bottlenecks are:
At each of these points an arbitrary size limit on e-mail messages can be set.
MailRules, using Surefire Delivery, is designed to beat these limits.
Surefire delivery is designed to dynamically re-size the messages that are being sent, according to the feedback it gets from the recipient. In addition to this, Surefire Delivery takes data from the mailboxes to ensure that limitations are never exceeded. Furthermore, Surefire Delivery builds on existing MailRules functionality to ensure that the minimum amount of data is transmitted.
The originating MailRules ("Sender") sends a "probe" message to the recipient machine giving a list of all files, their version & datestamp, and their size.
The recipient machine compares the date stamp or version of the files in the list, selects those it requires and confirms that it has sufficient storage space for the files. It then replies giving a list of the files it requires, the optimum file size (see Surefire Delivery - Settings) and confirms that it has sufficient space (if the Recipient does not have sufficient space to store all the files marked for transmission, or if no files are required, the conversation will be terminated).
The Sender looks at the reply and prepares the files that are required. It compresses and encrypts the files, then splits them down into sizes according to either the requested size, or the known size limitation on the sending machine. The actual size will be the largest that both sides agree can be safely transmitted.
Surefire Delivery will then send the first message as 'one of (n)messages', and wait to hear from the recipient machine. If it fails to hear back within the specified time it will look at the size of the message it is sending and then reduce the file size of the zipped message further and send the first message again. This routine will continue until either the retries expire or it receives a reply.
When it receives a reply it then sends the second part at the same size as the first successful one. MailRules will wait for confirmation that the second message has been received then repeat the process until the whole message has been processed.
As each part arrives in the Recipient's mailbox, they will be removed from the mailbox and placed in temporary storage. When all the messages have been sent and received, the recipient machine will amalgamate and unzip the files to their target location.
You will have to experiment to find your optimum settings for Reply Check and Timeout. There are many variables - Internet delivery speeds, your ISP or, if in a corporate environment, how often your network administrator has set checks with your ISP. All of these can have variable effects on the ability of messages to be received in a timely manner.
Please note that you cannot demonstrate Surefire Delivery by messaging yourself. MailRules requires that another copy be running on the target machine for this technology to run properly.
Surefire Delivery is patent pending