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WebRTC solves all the issues you're mentioning, and is available in Chrome and Firefox (in some for in Edge, and soon in Safari). Three examples of this, imple

WebRTC solves all the issues you're mentioning, and is available in Chrome and Firefox (in some for in Edge, and soon in Safari). Three examples of this, implemented and working: - https://www.sharedrop.io/ https://www.sharedrop.io/ - https://www.justbeamit.com/ https://www.justbeamit.com/ - https://file.pizza/ https://file.pizza/

AndrewDucker 9y ago
So, three systems which all require a central service?
- padenot 9y ago
  Those services are for the initial peer discovery and SDP exchange, which can be done by other means (using any other side-channel). Ongoing work is happening, for example by the webtorrent folks, to remove this constraint.
  - AndrewDucker 9y ago
    Yeah, it's initial peer discovery and connection setup (if behind NAT) I'm talking about. Once you've found the other PC and got a connection set up then all is well ;-) Do these services also act as connectors in case of double NAT?
    - padenot 9y ago
      They certainly can, I don't know if they do in practice. It always work for me, so I haven't investigated too much.
    - TD-Linux 9y ago
      STUN allows all sorts of hole-punching for cases where both peers are behind NATs. For cases where the hole-punching doesn't work (a user behind two NATs might be one case), you can use TURN which is a dumb UDP or TCP relay.
  - rakoo 9y ago
    They're also needed for the actual javascript code that runs everything.
  - the8472 9y ago
    Which is a step backwards compared to bittorrent, since that can also provide decentralized hole punching, bootstrapping and peer discovery and not just the bulk data transfer. Plus being implemented at the TCP/UDP level allows more fine-grained control over the data flow, making it more friendly towards the network.
- wybiral 9y ago
  What about something like Tor. You can run a hidden service to get an onion address that any Tor client can access. Would that meet the requirements without being a "central" service?
  - dublinben 9y ago
    That's exactly how Onionshare works. https://onionshare.org/ https://onionshare.org/
    - wybiral 9y ago
      Never seen that before. But running a hidden service on Tor is absurdly easy, then you just shove a file server through whatever port Tor is forwarding.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    If privacy isn't your primary concern, and this is absolutely not private, you can also just use a redirection service and access .onion domains without installing Tor. Just take any .onion domain and append it with .to and it should work. examplelettersblah.onion becomes examplelettersblah.onion.to and that works without needing to muck about with Tor. This would be a horrible idea if you're concerned with privacy/anonymity. But, it'd make it easy for people to download your shared files.

AndrewDucker 9y ago

So, three systems which all require a central service?

padenot 9y ago
Those services are for the initial peer discovery and SDP exchange, which can be done by other means (using any other side-channel). Ongoing work is happening, for example by the webtorrent folks, to remove this constraint.
- AndrewDucker 9y ago
  Yeah, it's initial peer discovery and connection setup (if behind NAT) I'm talking about. Once you've found the other PC and got a connection set up then all is well ;-) Do these services also act as connectors in case of double NAT?
  - padenot 9y ago
    They certainly can, I don't know if they do in practice. It always work for me, so I haven't investigated too much.
  - TD-Linux 9y ago
    STUN allows all sorts of hole-punching for cases where both peers are behind NATs. For cases where the hole-punching doesn't work (a user behind two NATs might be one case), you can use TURN which is a dumb UDP or TCP relay.
- rakoo 9y ago
  They're also needed for the actual javascript code that runs everything.
- the8472 9y ago
  Which is a step backwards compared to bittorrent, since that can also provide decentralized hole punching, bootstrapping and peer discovery and not just the bulk data transfer. Plus being implemented at the TCP/UDP level allows more fine-grained control over the data flow, making it more friendly towards the network.
wybiral 9y ago
What about something like Tor. You can run a hidden service to get an onion address that any Tor client can access. Would that meet the requirements without being a "central" service?
- dublinben 9y ago
  That's exactly how Onionshare works. https://onionshare.org/ https://onionshare.org/
  - wybiral 9y ago
    Never seen that before. But running a hidden service on Tor is absurdly easy, then you just shove a file server through whatever port Tor is forwarding.
- KGIII 9y ago
  If privacy isn't your primary concern, and this is absolutely not private, you can also just use a redirection service and access .onion domains without installing Tor. Just take any .onion domain and append it with .to and it should work. examplelettersblah.onion becomes examplelettersblah.onion.to and that works without needing to muck about with Tor. This would be a horrible idea if you're concerned with privacy/anonymity. But, it'd make it easy for people to download your shared files.