It might help also to quantify "once and a while" a bit more exactly.
In any case, ANY solution you find will in some sense be a "short term solution", since the availability of services, especially free services, is always uncertain.
That said, and assuming for the moment that "rather large" refers to the 1-5 MB range typical of photos and documents, here are some suggestions.
1. Run an outgoing SMTP server that bypasses your ISP's mail relay and connects directly to the other end. This will get you past any size limits on attachments imposed by your ISP for files you send to others. It doesn't deal with size limits oh their ends, but knowing literally nothing about the recipients, I can hardly give you advice regarding their ends of the transfer.
2. Run an incoming SMTP server and let your friends connect to it "once in a while" when they have something large to send. Either arrange this ad hoc, based on your current (dynamic) IP address or use a dynamic-DNS service to resolve it. This eliminates any attachment size issues at your end other than ones imposed by you, and if you only use it occasionally, it will probably not catch your ISP's attention. (If you need to ... for example, if you ISP blocks incoming port-24 connections ... run on a non-standard port.)
3. Set up a VPN to do the transfer. If this interests you, post a followup so eomeone better qualified than I can dicsuss the details of doing this with LEAF.
4. Do the transfers over scp. Dach routers can (trivially) easily do the needed port forwarding at your end, and any Linux workstation can do scp transfers smoothly. As before, I cannot advise unknown "other users" how to set up their LANs and workstations for this, but most small home routers accommodate port forwarding pretty well. (If "rather large" is bigger than I have assumed, this may be your only real option.)
5. Run a Web server on a non-standard port and use it, ad hoc or via dynamic DNS, for the files you want to make available to others. Have them do the same thing at their ends to make files available to you. Again, if it is low volume, it will probably go unnoticed by your ISP.
6. Use some free group-style service to handle the transfers. Yahoo still offers free groups, and if you restrict membership to yourself and a few friends, you are unlikely to suffer much from their transfer limits. I think tripod still offers groups that make it easy to share photos. There are probably others too. Maybe MSN offers something, if you can stomach their (to my eye) intrusive registration requirements.
7. I did a Google search on "free web sites" and got a lot of hits. Try it yourself and check them out. Or possibly your ISP includes a small Web site as part of the service it sells to you?
8. This site -- http://www.emailaddresses.com/ -- lists a lot of sources of free and cheap e-mail accounts. See if you can find one that suits your needs.
9. Use a P2P application (Kazaa, Direct Connect, others) to do it. Your search on "file transfer" should lead you to the conventional choices here. These usually require port forwarding to run smoothly, but this is easy for Dach.
At 10:20 AM 11/29/2004 -0800, Arnold Wiegert wrote:
Since I am using LEAF (dachstein) and am not aware of any more specific user group, I'm posting my problem to this group. Besides, any solution will have to be accommodated by my firewall.
Googling for 'file transfer' drowns me in a flood of music related info, not at all related to my problem.
If you know of another group which might be more appropriate or better able to help, please let me know.
My problem is that I want to exchange some rather large files (mostly documents and pictures) once in a while with one or two other users on the internet.
My ISP does not allow any (permanent) servers at my end; besides, my IP address is dynamic.
I have considered some of the free mail services (gmail being the main one) but am a bit concerned that this solution may be only a short term solution, since I would expect that the conditions - mainly the price - might change at any time.
As well, I'm not entirely clear on how or whether or not this service would allow me to avoid the mail box limit, both inbound and outbound, imposed by my ISP.
Any information about the available options would be most welcome.
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