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WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

webwormhole.io

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Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#71
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things have changed (alot!) the last two years have seen a couple implementations come around. * https://github.com/pion/webrtc * https://github.com/aiortc/aiortc * https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/webrtc/index... * https://github.com/rawrtc/rawrtc

Ooh, these are very cool. Do you know what sorts of things people are building with them?

I'm also curious about what's being built.

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#72
post #14
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…

I blame NAT. Treating end-users like second-class netizen consumers trained people to "need" the cloud to do perfectly normal peer-to-peer things.

I blame Windows taking 20 years to include ssh.

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#73
post #62
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh that's interesting... I had no idea there were publicly available STUN servers like that.

But way back in 2014 a Google employee does seem to have confirmed it's free to use, but comes without guarantees.

[1] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/discuss-webrtc/shcPIaPxwo8/F...

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#74
post #59
post #39

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

Absolutely true for the web interface if loaded from https://webwormhole.io . I'm open for any more suggestions here! https://github.com/saljam/webwormhole/issues/13 Someone mentioned the command line client. One can also build and serve the html/js/wasm from anywhere and it should still work, even with the same signalling server. It has pretty lax CORS for this reason.

IPFS would be a solution here, since the files are content-addressed. You'd have to fetch them locally, since a gateway could still manipulate the content, but it's easier to find a gateway you trust.

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#75
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carrier grade NAT...

Sure, when you're talking about mobile devices. (Or has it already become a thing with DSL, too?) In any case, the issue started much earlier, I'd say.

maybe its not very common everywhere but here in Germany i have seen multiple ISPs deploying DS-Lite which means you will get CGNAT for IPv4 networks. whats worse is while if you demand a public IPv4 address you will get it you also wont get IPv6 connectivity anymore. why? no idea... Interestingly, if i happen to use my own DOCSIS modem i get a true DualStack solution so this is not a technical problem for them per se. However, doing so they will force you to use VoIP instead of the IMHO way more stable PacketCable you would get with their modem...

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#76
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely true for the web interface if loaded from https://webwormhole.io . I'm open for any more suggestions here! https://github.com/saljam/webwormhole/issues/13 Someone mentioned the command line client. One can also build and serve the html/js/wasm from anywhere and it should still work, even with the same signalling server. It has pretty lax CORS for this reason.

IPFS would be a solution here, since the files are content-addressed. You'd have to fetch them locally, since a gateway could still manipulate the content, but it's easier to find a gateway you trust.

Forgive my ignorance, but how would an IPFS gateway interfere here? If you have the hash of the js file you need, you can verify the gateway gives you the right one, correct? Or are you referring to the case where IPNS is used so the actually content at the address can change?

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#77
post #5

This is fantastic! Really nice work :) The nice thing about WebRTC is this works (pretty much) everywhere! Someone could throw up Python/Android/iOS/Go/Web/C++ Clients really easily. That is really exciting. Also just a HUGE fan of NAT Traversal/P2P in general. The less dependence we can have on others for sharing our data the better.

Was it you on the GoTime podcast? If so the enthusiasm for webrtc and go just motivated me a ton. Kudos.

Yes I was! Thanks for listening :)

I really want to get more Go developers into WebRTC/P2P, that was my goal for this year. It is hard to convince conference developers WebRTC is more interesting then all the DevsOps stuff! I am putting in the good fight though.

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPFS would be a solution here, since the files are content-addressed. You'd have to fetch them locally, since a gateway could still manipulate the content, but it's easier to find a gateway you trust.

Forgive my ignorance, but how would an IPFS gateway interfere here? If you have the hash of the js file you need, you can verify the gateway gives you the right one, correct? Or are you referring to the case where IPNS is used so the actually content at the address can change?

If you go to the hassle of verifying the hash, yes, that's fine. I was talking about just loading and using the page, which can be tampered with (because the hash checking happens on the gateway).

Re: WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC

#80
post #57

> ...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?

> 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? Anecdata, of course, but I haven't been able to reliably use any of these WebRTC based file transfer services (file.pizza, instant.io, etc etc). Testing mostly between two computers on the same subnet. Sometimes…

Also didn't work for me on Firefox/Linux, between 2 tabs.
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