Re:Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?
by brink on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @10:32PM
(#24360334)
Why not use Syncthing or Resilio Sync for LAN parties?
Re:Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?
by jivank on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @10:40PM
(#24360362)
I have considered it. The one thing about Syncthing is that there is no true readonly way to sync. For example, someone may accidentally extract an archive in the Syncthing folder and it will sync everywhere. If Syncthing gets this feature I think I would be 100% onboard with it for LAN parties.
Resilio I believe supports it but I would prefer an opensource alternative.
Re:Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?
by csdreamer7 on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @11:59PM
(#24360699)
You can use the send only feature in Syncthing to make your folder read only.
https://docs.syncthing.net/users/foldertypes.html#folder-sen...
Re:Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?
by jivank on Thursday September 03, 2020 @01:22PM
(#24366324)
Sure, I can have for example my computer be send only. But unless everyone else configures it properly as receive only, they can start pushing data to other clients. It would be far easier to have Syncthing create a readonly share similar to Librevault and Resilio.
The inspiration for this tool is for assist with LAN parties. The one thing I have against the private flag is that it also disables LAN peer discovery, which would be okay if you use a tracker behind the LAN (though the torrent would need to be modified if the hostname/IP changes). Since you can't configure other people's clients I found it simpler to use Aria2 that is preconfigured to disable PEX and DHT.
Combine this with Metalink or Web Seeds, so that you can have a initial seeder based on HTTP. I think using IPFS would be a great web seed as long as the their gateway and Cloudfare's continues to stay up. IPFS creates a permanent URL if you will, so no need to worry about dynamic IPs or domains. It would be great if IPFS would have a smaller binary (right now it is around 20MB compressed) and had a way to get a file and "seed" it like a torrent. But for now I think torrent is mature enough.