Hacker News Reader

Comment by ignoramous | Hacker News Reader

See https://instant.io [0] for a similar file sharing service, but over BitTorrent over WebRTC (not sure if it requires a relay TURN server when peers are behind symmetric NAT) [1][2].

Other such services shared on news.yc previously: https://sharedrop.net, https://file.pizza, wormhole et al [3][4].

Just a reminder that, WebRTC doesn't leak your public-IP if you're behind a VPN [5].

---

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9568939

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19603947

[2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8445

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17356023

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14649727

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12527956

View on HN

Thank you. TIL: twilio runs a turn service:

https://www.twilio.com/stun-turn

Via https://github.com/webtorrent/instant.io/blob/master/README....

"Copy secret/index-sample.js to secret/index.js and set the Twilio API key if you want a NAT traversal service (to help peers connect when behind a firewall)."

Are there any open source variants that combines browser p2p and a "permanent" seed server?

I'd like to self-host a solution that let you upload (preferably via webtorrent) and share a file from a browser, but then let the server cache/host the file (preferably with http seeding support) - as well as give you a shareable magic link for classic torrent clients and a http url for browser download.

As far as I can tell, most solution ion are either browser p2p only, or server to browser (download only)?

> I'd like to self-host a solution that let you upload... from a browser, but then let the server cache/host the file... as well as give you a shareable magic link for torrent clients... and a http url for browser download.

Not self-hosting or open-source, but: One could upload objects to S3 and generate a .torrent file to download it from a BitTorrent client or download it via HTTP. Both these features are available at no extra cost (except for the bandwidth, of course).

Unfortunately, S3 has stopped supporting .torrent downloads from newer regions (post 2016). Also, the per-torrent object size is limited to 5GiB, plus enabling public and anonymous access to the torrent-able object is required, which is understandable but might be not feasible for most use-cases.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/S3TorrentRet...

Cool, but none of these services seem to be operational at the moment.

(Which is somewhat strange given that they are supposed to be run mostly in the browser.)

I’ve had great success with Sharedrop, but it’s at https://sharedrop.io, not .net as the OP linked.

One reasons services might have shut down is running the TURN server. An added annoyance over what would otherwise just be static files.

My bad. The mirror is at https://snapdrop.net [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21439659

Ok thanks, I'll check out Sharedrop.

Regarding the TURN server, is that something that is specific to the service? It seems to me that a more general approach would be preferable, i.e. not connected to any particular service.

Also, I'm wondering how IPFS is doing these days.

file.pizza is working fine for me, I use it monthly or so and have never seen any downtime.

I tried it but starting a download of a small file took more than two minutes, so I gave up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com