Sonntag, 26. September 2010

How to move large files around

Probably everyone of us has once encountered the simple problem of sending an arbitrary file to another computer connected through the Internet. This sounds like an easy and well-known task which has been solved many thousand times. However, the truth is different. So, let us consider this once again.

Of course, most of people use e-mail services to send copies of their files on a daily basis. If the file is big people commonly use file sharing services like rapidshare to upload and subsequently download the file. Looks familiar and common, but is it also the best solution? Let us take a closer look on how both of these methods work.

Both of the methods obviously rely on an intermediate storage, located somewhere in the Internet. This storage (e-mail account or shared file folder) preserves a shadow copy of the file before the file will be requested by the receiver. So, the whole process of sending the file to the receiver involves two file transmissions: The file is first copied on the remote storage, and then copied once again to the recipient’s computer. If we just need to copy the file once from one computer to another, why would we do that? Is it not irrational to copy the file twice?
If the cost of this intermediate copy is not so high and doing multiple copies is fast enough this of course is not a problem. But is it really like this? In most cases it is not.

Most of the filesharing providers impose a lot of restrictions on free accounts: Both maximum file size and bandwidth i.e. speed are limited in order to hold the costs low. The paid accounts must cover the costs of free-users accounts.
The usage of the e-mail accounts is very limited as the protocols of e-mail transition are not optimized for data transfer. The maximum file size is limited to 10-20 MB and by attaching files to e-mails they get blown up by about 1/3 of their size ( http://ask-leo.com/why_are_emailed_attachments_larger_than_the_original_file.html ) .

In addition: Why would you want to copy things twice, rely on third-party providers and their contract conditions if you could do it directly? It is like, in order to copy your photo archive to your friend’s computer, you archive the file, split it on several 1,4Mb chunks, copy it on 3,5” diskettes, and then copy it back on the friend’s disk and reassemble the fragments all together. What sounds curious happens every day in the Internet with file-sharing and similar services.

What is really needed here is a service that allows you to copy the file peer-to-peer from one computer directly to another one without any intermediate parties.
Easy to say, hard to do. For a long time people are used to use complex software on both computers in order to accomplish this simple task. That’s why the true file copying hasn’t been really promoted all over the Internet until now.

But... snow melt, things changed... Lately, a new independent provider has announced a service what would solve all of these problems: A true peer-to-peer and easy to use file copying service. Its name is Click2Copy (http://www.click2copy.com). This service works how you would expect it to work: It connects two computers in the Internet through a secured channel and copies files  between them of any arbitrary size. There are no limits: Files are sent with the sender’s full upload bandwidth through a direct connection, free of charge, point-to-point. No special software is required: The communicating parties are started in the Java VM as an applet in the browser.