Show HN: P2P file transfer using WebRTC | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: P2P file transfer using WebRTC

taonexus.com

9 pointslogicallee8 comments

It's sometimes frustrating to send files among devices. Now you can send any file to any Chrome/FireFox/Safari client that wants to receive it:

https://taonexus.com/p2pfilesharing

Just share your ID, select a file and click send, and the receiving client will prompt to save it:

There is no signup of any kind. You just need a way to copy the peer ID such as by email or text message, so they know who they're trying to get the file from.

This makes it much easier to transfer files among devices. I tested it on Windows and iPhone, it worked perfectly. It does not use the server, it is peer to peer.

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Hi,

Great idea, thanks for this.

I didn't have the time to test it thoroughly yet.

One observation though: the hash IDs should be shorter, in my humble opinion, as to be able to read it once on one screen and type it in on another. Or, communicate over the phone. If IDs are so complex that I need to copy-paste them around, then, that kind of defeats the purpose.

Thanks.

Thanks for the positive feedback!

I'm not sure, but think that if IDs were much shorter then people could impersonate peers and receive files that weren't intended for them.

Sending an ID by text message, email, Facebook messenger, etc, works well but large files tend to fail, Facebook downscales videos for example and Google has a small attachment file size limit, after that it offers to put files in a google drive link but people might not have space for that on their Google drive.

By sending the file via WebRTC there are no size limitations, it is just a convenient way to send a full resolution video in the moment. I tried it from my iPhone to computer, it worked better than trying to send the same file on Facebook (which reduces the quality, it gets downsampled) or trying to send it by email. Sharing the client ID was easy for me by email and it worked for me.

You could lock the ID once transfer has started, no?

I mean that with short ID's you could be transferring to the wrong person. Someone could squat all the short ID's, I think. (Just have a browser open for all of them and accept any downloads.) Then they would get things that weren't intended for them.

I am not an expert on WebRTC but I think this is why the ID's have a length like that, to prevent multiple people from using the same ID.

Yes, the worldwide scope is the problem here. I could envision a drop-down where users could choose the desired scope, like, for example: LAN, City, Country, Continent, and World. The wider the scope, the more chars used for the hash ID.

Tried to build doshare.me, we've yet to work on P2P capabilities

not working

Thanks for the feedback! What OS and browsers are you using, please? Did you receive any error messages?

It worked fine for me with correct messages, including across networks (I tested from my mobile phone network to my home network, not only just on the same wifi connection or same computer).

It should work in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari across any device and operating system. Normally you don't need to open any firewall ports either. It uses WebRTC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC

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