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WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

webwormhole.io

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Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#61
post #39

This is neat, but it seems like unlike with "real" Magic Wormhole, the server here can capture files by surreptitiously manipulating JS.

You can host the code on on your own server if you don’t trust someone else’s. The code is BSD licensed. It should work on a static website like GitHub pages.

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#62
post #40
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This uses STUN servers to help it poke through NATs. (That's what I mean by "WebRTC's NAT traversal tricks") There's no TURN server set for this, but it shouldn't be hard to add one. There are NATs where you'd need one to relay all the traffic, but these seem to be relatively rare nowadays. If anyone has any actual statistics on these I'd appreciate it!

Which one? Which STUN server are you using?

The website uses Google's.

On command line it's an option and Google's is default. I'd like to make the signalling server also a STUN server at some point.

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#63
post #30

> ...it uses WebRTC to make the direct peer connections. This allows us to make use of WebRTC's NAT traversal tricks, as well as the fact that it can be used in browsers. But I'm assuming it can't break through all NAT routers, right? A good portion of people still won't be able to use this? A service usable by everyone would require STUN and TURN servers to be set up, no? Or has WebRTC made advances I'm unaware of?

This uses STUN servers to help it poke through NATs. (That's what I mean by "WebRTC's NAT traversal tricks") There's no TURN server set for this, but it shouldn't be hard to add one. There are NATs where you'd need one to relay all the traffic, but these seem to be relatively rare nowadays. If anyone has any actual statistics on these I'd appreciate it!

" but these seem to be relatively rare nowadays "

AT&T 5G uses Symmetric NAT. It's not rare if you have an iPhone or iPad with cellular. No way to do P2P without relaying traffic unless you want to "guess" the randomized port number, and, on that front, there are NAT-device-aware algorithms that can make that process faster.

We were promised IPv6 will make NAT's not necessary but I believe service providers use NATs not simply to conserve the IPv4 space but to actively discourage using the service to host your own servers.

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#66

i like the approach of encrypting locally, uploading to the cloud and sending the decryption key via a link. that's the way firefox send does it https://send.firefox.com it's open source so you could run an instance of it if you wanted to.

For the tech savy that like to use the CLI, checkout: https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#67
post #12
post #4

file.pizza is another similar project

I once tried sending a 3 GB file through it, then kept wondering why my entire system became so sluggish. Turns out it loads the entire thing into RAM... The file didn't go through either. I hope this one isn't like that.

The JavaScript implementation is creating a blob with a URL pointing to it so the user can save the file. I might be wrong, but I think that the all the data is in browser memory before it is saved.

Browsers are pretty restrictive about writing to the file system.

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#68
post #10

It's 2020, and people are elated to discover that it is possible to transfer a file directly between two systems on the Internet. True story: I was giving a guest lecture on network virtualization at UCI and demoing ZeroTier. One student came up afterwords and asked me how traffic could flow between systems without "a cloud." Evidently the idea that data could just go directly from point A to point B was utterly, com…

"Drop.io was nominated for the Technical Achievement Award at the South By Southwest 11th Annual Web Awards in 2007." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop.io

It keeps happening.

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#70
post #69

Who pays for the stun and turn servers?

Turn servers are expensive but there are plenty of free SatUN servers. For example Google offers free stun servers.

Has the pandemic made ipv6 more popular somehow?
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