On occasion I find myself needing to send a file at least a few gigabytes in size to a friend across our slow ISPs but haven’t found a satisfying solution. I usually end up creating a private torrent with the announce address of my own IP. Even though it’s slow - it basically never reaches my max upload speed for some reason, it is at least resilient if there are ever any network glitches.
Does anyone else face this same challenge?
EDIT: Thank you for the awesome suggestions! I have some homework to do on these
Before I moved I used to use my web server.
My Domain . Com / files . Zip And I would set a password on the zip. After they download it, they tell me and I remove the file.
Reminds me I had been needing to find something for this too. Looks like I had thought about using Croc.
You could try wormhole. It makes a direct connection.
Or croc which is very similar. I think it also allows to resume file transfers.
I’ve never faced that challenge, but my first idea would have been to make a VPN connection with something like tailscale. After that you could transfer data however you’d do it over a local network.
It’s generally not a good idra to give others access to your home network
My use case is a bit different than yours but still worth mentioning, I think; I have Sharry running in Docker and it makes sharing and receiving files super easy. All downloads and uploads are resumable so they work well even in unstable networks.
i like zipline but i use it for smaller files where download resumability is not a key factor
I’ve used:
But for slower connections bittorrent is the best option by far because it doesn’t care about interruptions, and verifies the data as it goes. Just gotta make sure you’re port forwarding the client.
If they are local, you can just put it on a thumb drive and physically transfer it.
Absolutely, that is definitely preferred when possible!
I use an ancient HTTP File Server program called HFS from Rejetto. Very light weight. Supports making user accounts and whatnot if you want.
I usually just turn it on for a transfer and don’t leave it up these days, but still comes in handy on occasion.
HFSv2 (the windows exe) has publically known unfixed vulnerabilities! Please upgrade to HFSv3 (nodejs, crossplatform). I’m also maintaining a list of other alternatives; https://github.com/9001/copyparty/blob/hovudstraum/docs/versus.md
RFC 2549: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2549
This problem was solved years ago: https://spectrum.ieee.org/pigeonbased-feathernet-still-wingsdown-fastest-way-of-transferring-lots-of-data
Friends I know IRL: Thumbdrives.
Friends I only know via the Internet: Torrents or IRC filesharing.
Though knowing that a homing pigeon with a thumb drive is actually faster than the fastest Internet network on the planet, maybe I should simply invest in a coop and some pigeons. 🤔
Though knowing that a homing pigeon with a thumb drive is actually faster than the fastest Internet network on the planet
Depends on how big the flash drive is, I suppose. Need to send a 1GB file? Just make a torrent. Need to send 40TB? Yeah, that hard drive is getting driven across town.
Perhaps two pigeons could carry the hard drive on a string. I’ve heard tell of swallows that have done this with coconuts.
Exactly what kind of pigeons are we talking about here? Or would you recommend switching to an avian variant of the migratory type?
I’d recommend either an african or european swallow.
rsync
