How do you like to transfer large files between friends across the internet?
-
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
I literally just set up a container for Erugo for this exact thing. It worked perfectly and was super easy to do. It's just a self-hosted version of wetransfer. Could be helpful...
-
That should work for media files at least, but I believe they'll also need Plex pass to be able to download anything.
Should be able to do that with Jellyfin, no Plex/Plex Pass needed (if you really want to use media software for this).
That said I suspect your current method with creating a torrent to share is much more resilient when dealing with choppy internet connections. With Jellyfin/Plex it's more of a direct download situation, not sure if either can resume broken downloads.
-
Why does Wireguard or any other VPN not work like Tailscale or Zerotier?
tailscale and zerotier are wireguard, but with a public server that helps with NAT. Syncthing uses a public server for that too.
wireguard was specifically made to be as simple and minimalistic as possible.
Why don't torrent clients can't work with IPv6 to seed more?
is there such a problem? honest question. But I think that might be a different issue
Why doesn't Plex adopt a similar mechanic like Syncthing to expose the media over the Internet instead of being a prisoner of CGNAT?
maybe they just don't see working on it profitable enough
> is there such a problem? honest question. But I think that might be a different issue
Yes, that is a problem. We're still in a world where you need to manually enable port forwarding in order to get better seeding for bittorrent clients, and if you have CGNAT you're SOL (short of using a VPN or something to bounce through an external host).
It's likely because torrent software is older (& in crappier languages), and came about before CGNAT was a thing.
-
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
If its a file from my seedbox: Direct share link (optional pw)
Local file: OneDrive -
Er, wait, are you using Syncthing for its intended purpose of syncing files across devices on your local network? And then exposing that infrastructure to the internet? Or are you isolating Syncthing instances?
Syncthing has public releays enabling it to work (dunno if one or none need to be public) without both parties being exposed.
-
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
I used vaultwarden just the other day for this purpose. I mean, I use vaultwarden daily as a password manager, but it also has secure file transfer.
-
Why does Wireguard or any other VPN not work like Tailscale or Zerotier?
tailscale and zerotier are wireguard, but with a public server that helps with NAT. Syncthing uses a public server for that too.
wireguard was specifically made to be as simple and minimalistic as possible.
Why don't torrent clients can't work with IPv6 to seed more?
is there such a problem? honest question. But I think that might be a different issue
Why doesn't Plex adopt a similar mechanic like Syncthing to expose the media over the Internet instead of being a prisoner of CGNAT?
maybe they just don't see working on it profitable enough
tailscale and zerotier are wireguard, but with a public server that helps with NAT. Syncthing uses a public server for that too.
wireguard was specifically made to be as simple and minimalistic as possible.
Zerotier wasn't always Tailscale was it?
is there such a problem? honest question. But I think that might be a different issue
You need to be connectable to download from all the peers, likewise non connectable users can't download from you, and how do you become connectable? By opening your ports, something that might seem archaic from somebody who has totally embraced IPv6.
maybe they just don't see working on it profitable enough
Yeah maybe.
Just to clarify, I have several workarounds for the 3 issues that have involved spending more money or not to get rid of CGNAT.
-
For the 1st one... Well I already mentioned it, I am a ZT and Tailscale user, I did try Wireguard from a VPS once though, but I didn't like that I was entirely dependant of my upload speed, maybe I had my Iptables wrongly configured but I usually got faster speeds just using ZT or Tailscale (I didn't need to relay in the US VPS server).
-
For Torrenting... I actually haven't found a solution to use IPv6... I did use a container client to use my VPS at that time though, it being Digital Ocean and thus getting a DMCA letter for downloading TWD me being a LATAM user was... A kinda funny experience, with that said I stopped that project immediately, it was fun to give back to the community with my 24/7 NAS always seeding though.
-
For the last point... Well, I do use ZT and Tailscale to access the server myself, but when I want to expose it, I usually do it with a reverse proxy pointing out to my IPv6 address, and more recently using a Tailscale funnel, I haven't tried it thoroughly, but at least it seems to connect without using Plex's relays.
As you can see, one needs to be well prepared with workarounds to deal with CGNAT.
-
-
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
I've use Plik before with success.
-
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
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.
-
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
-
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
Create share links allowing anyone with the link (+ optional password) to browse and download individual files, or whole folder contents.
If someone needs to send me a file, I can create a user for them in a few seconds; so they can upload to that as well.
-
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.
-
I use wormhole, but when I've wanted to use that website for receiving, I can never tell how to do it.
Can you actually use that site to receive files?
So just like when you send a file you fwd a link, someone tfering files to you must provide the link. They expire in a maximum of 24 hours though so do be aware of that.
-
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.
-
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. -
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
-
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
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
-
wormholeis good; also its CLI. -
If they are local, you can just put it on a thumb drive and physically transfer it.
If they’re not local, you can put it on a pen drive and mail it to them.
-
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
Upload to Proton Drive > Create share link > Share link
