File ai: file sharing… a bit different

Posted by on Dec 13, 2008 in TechTip | 0 comments

File sharing is usually a problem when people are trying to send big files to each other.

Some problems that come up with this issue are the following:

  • Email attachments too big, and the recipient mail server rejects it.
  • Problems with the firewall configured incorrectly, or explicitely to reject incoming file transfers.
  • User not knowing how to actually share a file with normal methods (zip/attach, WebDAV, FTP, etc …)

There are methods out there that use intermediary servers share your files with others, and these are methods that would actually allow you to upload the file to the server, and make it available for people. For some people, there is a concern of security, or even the fact their file is stored somewhere else.

The method that File ai uses is a little bit like the BitTorrent clients, (which, in most cases are usually open to a big peer to peer network). This method, is, of course available for anyone to use, but would require you to know how to create torrent files to share up, and would require the recipient to have a BitTorrent client. Scratch that!

File ai is also peer to peer, only, it would allow you to upload the file, and as soon as the file start uploading, the user can start downloading it on their end. so if you are uploading a 500Mb video to somebody over your DSL connection, it could take a couple hours to upload before the other side can do anything with that file.

File ai will allow the immediate start of downloading the file as soon as the uploader hits the upload button.

The data ends up residing nowhere in this case, it just uses the File ai service as an intermediary to transfer the file over.

At this time, File ai is in Beta, does not have a file transfer limit (because they’re not really storing the files anywhere, and they are FREE.

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