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Direct file transfer via browser with no server involvement

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Re: Direct file transfer via browser with no server involvement

#51

Post by pierrefermat1 »

apexalpha wrote: post #38

Why would anyone use this service when you can just transfer files by temporarely opening a TCP port and starting a netcat listener that you pipe into the file you want? It's as simple as nc -lvnp 1234 > myfile.txt The other party then only needs to pipe the file into a netcat socket from their commandline. nc -w 3 IP Jokes aside I'm intrigued at the "no server involvement". I'm assuming they mean the file isn't tran…

I assume this was inspired by the legendary comment on why Dropbox would fail

Gave me a good laugh!

Re: Direct file transfer via browser with no server involvement

#52

Post by capableweb »

jeroenhd wrote: post #49
capableweb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm assuming they mean the file isn't transferred through the server but directly (WebRTC?) Why are you assuming so, checking how it works is trivial if you open up the Network inspector. I did so in Chrome, and as I said in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29225472 , uploading happens by doing a POST request to the server, and fetching happens by doing a PUT request, not sure why people keep re-iterating that…

There is WebRTC code in the javascript source. It looks like some kind of POST/PUT code is used to exchange metadata about the files, but the files themselves don't seem to get transferred to the server. Or maybe you're seeing different behaviour from everyone else because WebRTC is not behaving right and you're getting the fallback behaviour? The "with no server involvement" part of the title is definitely wrong, th…

> Or maybe you're seeing different behaviour from everyone else because WebRTC is not behaving right and you're getting the fallback behaviour?

Could be. I've tried it in both Firefox (94.0.1) and Chrome (93.0.4577.63) on Linux (5.15.2), maybe they fallback based on OS if so? Weird, as other websites have no trouble using WebRTC with either Firefox or Chrome for me.

Re: Direct file transfer via browser with no server involvement

#53

Post by Kiro »

capableweb wrote: post #52
jeroenhd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is WebRTC code in the javascript source. It looks like some kind of POST/PUT code is used to exchange metadata about the files, but the files themselves don't seem to get transferred to the server. Or maybe you're seeing different behaviour from everyone else because WebRTC is not behaving right and you're getting the fallback behaviour? The "with no server involvement" part of the title is definitely wrong, th…

> Or maybe you're seeing different behaviour from everyone else because WebRTC is not behaving right and you're getting the fallback behaviour? Could be. I've tried it in both Firefox (94.0.1) and Chrome (93.0.4577.63) on Linux (5.15.2), maybe they fallback based on OS if so? Weird, as other websites have no trouble using WebRTC with either Firefox or Chrome for me.

You can't see WebRTC in the normal Network tab. Go to chrome://webrtc-internals/ and you will see the WebRTC action.

Re: Direct file transfer via browser with no server involvement

#54

Post by capableweb »

kevingadd wrote: post #4

Minified and obfuscated so it's hard to tell what's going on in this but it looks like it uses WebRTC to do peer-to-peer transfers, with the aid of a STUN server to establish the initial connection.

Here you have a somewhat unminified/reverse-engineered source: https://pastebin.com/NzP3KMKy Some of the variables are harder to infer what they mean though, so it's incomplete.

Re: Direct file transfer via browser with no server involvement

#56

Post by vermilingua »

capableweb wrote: post #50
Asdrubalini wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think transferring a file via netcat without any form of encryption is something i would recommend, unless you are on a network you 100% trust. EDIT: it seems like this service doesn't even support HTTPS...

Not supporting HTTPS together with falsely claiming "no server involvement" when everything happens via the server makes me think this is a honeypot or something like that.

If there is no server involvement, how could there be HTTPS, which by definition requires some trust in the server?

Re: Direct file transfer via browser with no server involvement

#57

Post by vermilingua »

wwarek wrote: post #9

Alternatively, using the same technology: https://www.sharedrop.io/ and actually multiple others. Quite convincing to transfer files between devices in LAN, instead of looking for USB cable to connect the phone or trying to establish (never working and much slower) Bluetooth connection.

I like sharedrop and was using it for quite some time; but as of late it has become unreliable, either not allowing clicking on other machines, or reporting the transfer as successful when the destination has received nothing at all.

I suspect this is primarily a UI issue, but the whole product is just a UI wrapper on a WWW protocol, so a mere UI glitch is quite devastating.

Re: Direct file transfer via browser with no server involvement

#58

Post by sekh60 »

dandanua wrote: post #25
grandpoobah wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same, and I think it's sad that this is the best we can do in 2021 :)

Yes, today it's much harder to transfer files in a local network without using cloud (or external coordinator), for some reason.

Samba, NFS, SSH, scp, there are tons of ways to locally transfer files without a server if you know the IP address.

Re: Direct file transfer via browser with no server involvement

#59

Post by mkl »

wanderingmind wrote: post #28

Didnt read the link as its not https, but if you are looking for a solution to transfer files across multiple devices, try syncthing[0], its opensource and does real time sync [0] https://docs.syncthing.net/index.html

Syncthing is great, but has a very different purpose.

Re: Direct file transfer via browser with no server involvement

#60

Post by _trampeltier »

grandpoobah wrote: post #20
dmje wrote: post #15

Used to use sharedrop.io but found the “saved messages” option in Telegram is just the most zero friction option for mobile desktop transfers.

I do the same, and I think it's sad that this is the best we can do in 2021 :)

It's even more worse in the mobile world. I would share a lot of pictures after two weeks holiday with somebody who has an Iphone. I have an Android phone. There is not way to transfer pictures direct from Android to Iphone (holiday location != flat rate). WTF 2021.
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