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Show HN: Payload – Cross-platform desktop app for LAN file transfers

payload.app

21–30 of 33 posts

Re: Show HN: Payload – Cross-platform desktop app for LAN file transfers

#22
post #7

https://file.pizza afaik does LAN transfers using webrtc, supports iOS and Android because it's just a browser application. (Does have browser JS limitations, but then for serious copying I would use something like ssh anyhow. Don't want an hour-long transfer to fail halfway through because javascript had a hiccup.)

I tried it recently as well as P2P based apps like https://www.sharedrop.io/ but it doesn't work great for large files (> 500MB). The speed decreases the longer the transfer takes.

I have to try if it is the same case with Payload.

Re: Show HN: Payload – Cross-platform desktop app for LAN file transfers

#23
post #5
post #4

Just tested this between my MacBook Pro (Max with 64GB RAM) and my main workstation, GodBoxV3 (Dual 20 Core Xeon, 256GB RAM, and lots of SSD/NVMe storage). The MacBook has a 10GbE link and GodBoxV3 has 2x10GbE Links... Tried sending a file from the Mac to GodBoxV3 and it didn't top out at more than 40MB/s. The Windows client also crashed about halfway through. Mind you, when I restarted it, it did recover the transfe…

Thanks a ton for trying out! I get >100 MB/s between my M1 and Windows machine (with significantly worse specs than yours) so this was a cold shower. Can I ask: - Did you transfer a large e.g. a large directory (I haven't optimized for large amount of files) or just a single file? If so, was that file large enough to let the speed ramp up? - Did you happen to notice high CPU or memory usage during the transfer? Expec…

in both cases, I transferred a single ISO. one was 1.7GB (Mac -> PC) and back it was 6.5Gb (Win -> Mac). CPU seems to be quite low... PC is hovering around 11-14%, it's usually at 10% (got some VMs running in the background). Agent on the mac is around 4-5. Just ran a second test today, and got less than 5MB/s from Windows -> Mac. The numbers for CPU and RAM above are from that run. 6.5GB ISO is being sent again... [Edit] There is a pending reboot on that Windows box I need to do, at some stage, and I will retest it then. I double-checked that it wasn't sent data over Zerotier or Tailscale (both installed on both machines) and nope. It's just over the standard LAN. Both boxes are on the same subnet, so nothing between them. I will do a bit more digging and open a ticket with my findings. Thanks.

Re: Show HN: Payload – Cross-platform desktop app for LAN file transfers

#24
post #7

https://file.pizza afaik does LAN transfers using webrtc, supports iOS and Android because it's just a browser application. (Does have browser JS limitations, but then for serious copying I would use something like ssh anyhow. Don't want an hour-long transfer to fail halfway through because javascript had a hiccup.)

This didn't work on my network. The transfer never moved more than 0%, going from my desktop to my phone.

Re: Show HN: Payload – Cross-platform desktop app for LAN file transfers

#25
Congrats on the launch.

I recently released something similar[1][2] (cross-platform file transfer, mostly for LAN but also works over the internet).

I feel like our projects are kinda complementary, you do frontend well, I think I win in terms of backend.

Hit me up if you want to chat and/or collaborate.

[1] https://github.com/mprimi/nasefa

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32027970

Re: Show HN: Payload – Cross-platform desktop app for LAN file transfers

#26
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks a ton for trying out! I get >100 MB/s between my M1 and Windows machine (with significantly worse specs than yours) so this was a cold shower. Can I ask: - Did you transfer a large e.g. a large directory (I haven't optimized for large amount of files) or just a single file? If so, was that file large enough to let the speed ramp up? - Did you happen to notice high CPU or memory usage during the transfer? Expec…

in both cases, I transferred a single ISO. one was 1.7GB (Mac -> PC) and back it was 6.5Gb (Win -> Mac). CPU seems to be quite low... PC is hovering around 11-14%, it's usually at 10% (got some VMs running in the background). Agent on the mac is around 4-5. Just ran a second test today, and got less than 5MB/s from Windows -> Mac. The numbers for CPU and RAM above are from that run. 6.5GB ISO is being sent again... […

Is your HD on one or both of the machines possibly the bottleneck?

Re: Show HN: Payload – Cross-platform desktop app for LAN file transfers

#28

How is this better than SyncThing? SyncThing works across the Internet. If you think your GUI is better, why not integrate the syncthing backend? If you think your LAN transfer is faster, why not contribute that code to syncthing?

It's a fair question. SyncThing is a great piece of software and has overlap with Payload.

In another comment, I explained why I think transfer and storage are fundamentally different: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32102205

SyncThing would be perfect to integrate with SpaceDrive but makes less sense for Payload, today.

Re: Show HN: Payload – Cross-platform desktop app for LAN file transfers

#29

You may have answered this in a previous thread, or it may be a dumb question, but why not just wrap rsync?

It's not dumb. Many subtle differences but I guess the biggest one is that with Payload the receiver can see the proposed files and sizes, choose dst dir and accept/decline, so you don't need to go on each device and tell it "I trust these other devices" before the fun begins.

Re: Show HN: Payload – Cross-platform desktop app for LAN file transfers

#30
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in both cases, I transferred a single ISO. one was 1.7GB (Mac -> PC) and back it was 6.5Gb (Win -> Mac). CPU seems to be quite low... PC is hovering around 11-14%, it's usually at 10% (got some VMs running in the background). Agent on the mac is around 4-5. Just ran a second test today, and got less than 5MB/s from Windows -> Mac. The numbers for CPU and RAM above are from that run. 6.5GB ISO is being sent again... […

Is your HD on one or both of the machines possibly the bottleneck?

Nope. NVMe in both cases...
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