Modern alternatives to DC++?

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Willuknight

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#195956 13-May-2016 12:15

Hey guys,

Just wondering about finding a good sharing software for my flat of 6 people - waaay back in the day we used DC++ and I'm just wondering if anything better has come along in the last 10 years? I've never had much luck having windows shares work without issues and I can't be bothered constantly troubleshooting sharing issues the way I feel like windows shares always seem to do.

Thanks, and sorry for the dumb question!

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#1552112 13-May-2016 12:26

What problems are you having? Anonymous shares are easy. Anything beyond that is just about impossible, even homegroups are stuffed.

There's a Windows forum, this post will likely be moved there.

Willuknight

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#1552113 13-May-2016 12:29

I should probably state I'm not really looking for trouble shooting for windows shares, all of my IT experience has left me completely set with the idea that windows sharing is broken. My question is more - is there anything better than DC++ for sharing in a lan environment?

Jase2985

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#1552135 13-May-2016 12:32

I am running windows shares with the following devices

windows vista, xp, 7, 8.1 and 10, and android

took about 30 mins to setup and has been working that way for a while now with no issues

im not sure what issues you are having

timmmay

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#1552140 13-May-2016 12:47

Jase2985:

I am running windows shares with the following devices

windows vista, xp, 7, 8.1 and 10, and android

took about 30 mins to setup and has been working that way for a while now with no issues

im not sure what issues you are having

Your experience may be the exception. I can't get Homegroups to work between Windows 10 installs on the same LAN, I can't get password protected shares to work either. Anonymous or nothing.

Jase2985

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#1552150 13-May-2016 13:03

not using home group, just simple file sharing

Lias

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#1552152 13-May-2016 13:05

Assuming you're talking about the sharing "linux iso's" between friends/flatmates then a DC hub is still a perfectly valid way to do it. Pretty much every LAN I've ever attended still uses DC hubs to share stuff.

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup.

hio77

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Lizard Networks

#1552154 13-May-2016 13:10

at large lans, DC hub is still a thing although you will never know until you turn up... hashing is a b!tch.

sadly development seems to have died out, but D-LAN was our goto for lans, less intense than DC hubs, more use friendly.

not everyone was so keen on D-LAN, it was effective though. Far better than local torrents or anything like that. worth building from the git possibly

Searching was handy.

FAP is also a pretty decent option. Their git is probably also worth a good read.

Although encouraging people to use "FAP" does come with a joke or two....

All have their pitfalls, but options at the end of the day. FAP is probably the most friendly although we never tested it in a real world situation, DLAN had its run for many years. i honestly loved it. Biggest change i have notice to the "modern alternatives" is they communicate via broadcast rather than having an overlord commanding them. You have no server to connect to, it just... works...

Which also leaves it open to breaking if broadcasts are buggered with mind-you..

SMB shares can be hit and miss, Generally Okay though. There is the occasional releases that windows 10 put out that broke and fixed them over and over again...

The biggest flaw in SMB is the whole Master Slave system IMO, I have my network setup to encourage preference for a master in my server racks rather than a random desktop on the network. That is more of a fault of discovery than actually working with them directly though.

Overall the question is, what are you trying to do? P2P shares? simple searching? Reliable discovery? Increase overall speed?

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macuser

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#1552177 13-May-2016 13:17

I've got a flat file share, SMB via my router. It's bottlenecked by the router (30-40MBps read/write) but given ease of use and low power needs I prefer it over having a system running 24/7 just for a file share, and the router also has a DLNA server functioning, so it makes viewing content on the server easy. I generally use my phone to use the DLNA DMR function to push movies and TV shows to my TV. Files even 40GB in size stream fluently.

HowickDota

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#1552179 13-May-2016 13:19

FTP/SFTP

ghettomaster

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#1552193 13-May-2016 13:45

Coming back to windows file shares, because everyone seems to find it hard to get it going in a workgroup, are you having problems getting the machines to find each other, or with authentication?

russelo

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#1552197 13-May-2016 13:54

Have a look at HTTP File sharing:

http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/

Only one executable and easy to setup.

timbosan

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#1552235 13-May-2016 15:15

russelo:

Have a look at HTTP File sharing:

http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/

Only one executable and easy to setup.

Yeah, wouldn't the problem (i.e. not SMB or Windows file shares, but the DC++ one) be best served with a simple HTML page? You could easily hand code something that points to files on a server, and with a download client you could run multiple streams.

Failing that sFTP is quick as well

Willuknight

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#1552275 13-May-2016 15:43

Thanks for all the replies, FAP sounds really interesting, no hashing which is nice.

hio77:

Overall the question is, what are you trying to do? P2P shares? simple searching? Reliable discovery? Increase overall speed?

I mainly want to enable people in the flat to share media and content on their computer, so we can stop downloading the same stuff over and over, and so people have access to my extensive downloaded files. I have my computer on 24/7 so it makes an ideal host for people to stream from and we're on a gigabyte backbone.

ghettomaster:

Coming back to windows file shares, because everyone seems to find it hard to get it going in a workgroup, are you having problems getting the machines to find each other, or with authentication?

It's always a mix, usually it's authentication, and I know all about setting permissions, but even when I have shares set to all users, half the time it never works. Even when I set it up with account and passwords, I can log in but I can't access files. I'm completely over windows sharing. Homegroup only made things worse, not better.

timbosan:

russelo:

Have a look at HTTP File sharing:

http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/

Only one executable and easy to setup.

Yeah, wouldn't the problem (i.e. not SMB or Windows file shares, but the DC++ one) be best served with a simple HTML page? You could easily hand code something that points to files on a server, and with a download client you could run multiple streams.

Failing that sFTP is quick as well

HTTP looks too annoying to expect my flatmates to use it. Also I want search.

1101

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#1552298 13-May-2016 16:24

Jase2985:

I am running windows shares with the following devices

windows vista, xp, 7, 8.1 and 10, and android

took about 30 mins to setup and has been working that way for a while now with no issues

im not sure what issues you are having

There's windows share bugs from way back in vista that still arnt fixed in 10.
Most of the time win to win sharing can be made to work, but not allways & when it doesnt ............
On some setups Ive been forced to use a net use batch file, autorunning on startup, just to get sharing working & usable (not that often though)

reven

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#1552338 13-May-2016 18:31

gez, windows sharing has been working pretty perfect for me for errr 10 years plus. just right click a folder click share, set the security to everyone and youre away laughing. takes all of 2 minutes. the security tab is probably what is messing you up.

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