Pando packs in those big files

Have you ever sent an e-mail with an attachment to someone only to discover that their inbox can't accept something larger than a few megabytes?

Remember how you felt when you got that dreaded mailer demon saying something to the effect that the e-mail you just sent was undeliverable because the recipient's inbox couldn't accept anything larger than 10 megabytes? Did you want to kill the recipient because it took you something like an hour to upload it?

Well, if that recipient is still living, and in the interest of living recipients everywhere, you may want to give Pando a try.

Pando is an interesting melding of two technologies, namely e-mail and peer-to-peer (P2P) networking.

The idea is for you to send an e-mail with virtually any size attachment to anyone via their e-mail address. In reality, that's not what actually happens, but Pando makes it appear as though it's happening that way. And that's a good thing because who wants to get bogged down in all the technology? You just want it to work and that's exactly what Pando does. It makes it look like you now have the ability to e-mail large files.

How it works

If you must know how it works, here's a brief explanation. But I suggest that after reading it, just go about e-mailing your large files without any more restriction worries.

To begin the process, you have to download the free Pando software from its Web site (www.pando.com). Both Mac and Windows versions are available. Running the Pando software begins the process. When you wish to send a large file, you put in the e-mail address of the person to whom you want to send it. You continue by composing your e-mail and attaching the large file. When you are finished, you click on the send button and that's it.

What happens next is that the Pando server sends a regular e-mail with a ".pando" suffix to the recipient. If this is the first time that person is using Pando, it contains a link so that the recipient can download the Pando application. When the recipient runs it, it begins the P2P link between your computer and the recipient's computer. Once that link is established, the file transfer begins directly from your computer to the other one, which is what P2P is all about. File sent and received, and that's all she wrote.

The next time you wish to send a large e-mail to the same recipient, the Pando application will already be in place so the P2P connection will happen more quickly. In addition to the ability of transferring large files, Pando adds a level of encryption that assures your data is safe from prying eyes until it reaches its intended destination.

Status menu

The Pando application has a status menu that lets you see if you are signed on to the Pando network. Once you have established you are online, you can send and receive the Pando "packages." If you are offline, file transfers already in progress will be paused until you go back online. This is especially nice since you won't have to start all over again just because you decided to turn your computer off for whatever reason. Once you are back online, the transfer will resume from where you left off.

Pando now is in a beta phase and until it goes completely online, file sizes will be limited to 1 gigabyte. Still, that's probably more than ample for most people and certainly beats learning too late that the file you just sent didn't make it to its destination. The premise of Pando is a good one. It's interesting to see how Pando has taken the two different technologies (e-mail and P2P) and combined them into a slick little application that makes them work together to produce a result that was just not possible individually.