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direct connection

T

Toby Goodbar

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 8, 2006
400
0
is there a way to directly (more or less) connect two computers across tha internet? ie me and a few friends want to be able to send each other large files to each other but IM clients have data restrictions etc...

would an FTP client work or would each of us have to become an FTP server?
HELP! BTW some of us are mac some are pc....
 
Toby Goodbar said:
is there a way to directly (more or less) connect two computers across tha internet? ie me and a few friends want to be able to send each other large files to each other but IM clients have data restrictions etc...

would an FTP client work or would each of us have to become an FTP server?
HELP! BTW some of us are mac some are pc....
Click to expand...

You've got the idea. The best way to transfer large files is to use FTP. One or more of you will need to set up a server. Note that Mac OSX ships with an FTP server use preferences->sharing to enable it

Email works too but it may have limits and it is not nearly as fast.
 
Actually the best way would be to use SSH and scp to transfer files between two computers. FTP is just a security risk.

Edit : On second thoughts I think I misunderstood in that case setting up a VPN would be the best option.
 
so thats tha simplest solution then?

or is there a cross platform app where you can connect and send each other tha files. nothing more needed. (basically like tha file transfer portion of an IM app but ONLY for files, messenging not needed.) ????
 
yellow said:
No, the simplest solution might be simple SMB file sharing to/from the WinTelThon and the Mac.
Click to expand...

It's kind of ironic that none of the file sharing apps that supposedly have "legitimate" uses bother to have a feature like this, then, isn't it? :eek:

Or is that true? Do any of the torrent / gnutella / whatever apps have a "private" direct xfer mode?
 
Hmm Unknown.. I don't think any Torrrents clients do since they are designed to spread the wealth, so to speak. Not sure about older file sharers. Possibly. But ultimately, is it worth it to install a potential "axis of evil" app on your Mac or Windows box for the sake of file transfer? Not IMO. :)

It's rather true that SFTP/SCP isn't terribly user friendly, but then when we look at they concepts/applications they are built on it makes sense. SMB/AFPoverTCP were built for the non-technical user in mind. Sadly ease-of-use was the primary concept and security took a backseat in both cases, though I believe modern AFPoverTCP and CIFS are much more "secure" than their respective parents.

Perhaps a nice app idea would be an independant cross-platform app that incorporates OpenSSH client/server as a service and would allow users to easily fileshare with each other. Of course, one could not charge a fee for this since OpenSSH is GPL'd. But still.
 
mkrishnan said:
It's kind of ironic that none of the file sharing apps that supposedly have "legitimate" uses bother to have a feature like this, then, isn't it? :eek:

Or is that true? Do any of the torrent / gnutella / whatever apps have a "private" direct xfer mode?
Click to expand...

funny you should mention that, i was playing around with frostwire tha other day and it seems they were wise enough to have a direct connection option. it tells you tha ip addy where others can contact you and provides a field to connect to someone else. just haven't had a chance to try it yet.... when i do i'll report back here.

Check out FolderShare it works quite well.
https://www.foldershare.com/
Click to expand...
Looks interesting. dloaded it, mi gon install it later just to check it out. being new to mac from windows i a hesitant to install windows software if mi not have to! haha HATE that company. mac is definately much better. did ya notice tha mac version is twice as big? :rolleyes:
 
Fastest DIRECT way for Mac to Mac is to start up one mac in Target Disk mode, by holding down T at start up. This turns one mac into a hard drive and you can just click and drag it over. For the PC guys, you can enable windows sharing and set up an FTP, (that's how I've done it) but I'm not too good when it comes to PC's.
 
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