Looking for closed-group filesharing software

July 4, 2004 8:43 PM

Private (closed-group) filesharing software? I'm thinking for 5-10 users, and it would be nice if it didn't require a dedicated machine -- just enter a list of our 10 IPs and it'll connect to whoever happens to be on. Encryption wouldn't hurt either.
posted by Aaorn to computers & internet (7 comments total)

There's Waste. You may remember it as the project that Nullsoft (makers of Winamp) released for about a day before their AOL overlords thumped them. It seems to be under active development still.

I don't have any personal experience with it though.
posted by smackfu at 8:51 PM on July 4, 2004

There's CleverCactus, but I tried it, and frankly, I don't think it's quite ready for prime time. It would randomly disconnect even though I have a good, constant connection to the net. And it never seemed to realize when my contacts were online and ready to share, even though they were.
posted by crunchland at 8:55 PM on July 4, 2004

There's a bunch of different options out there, and most of them don't require anything like entering IPs. They generally manage the dedicated servers as part of the infrastructure, so all you do is log in, and you're hooked up to your group's space. The better ones do require some kind of subscription fee, but they're not necessarily outrageous.

Groove is actually made by Ray Ozzie, who invented Notes, and is a pretty complete solution. It's got it's own client, with a pretty robust and customizable set of tools. It'd definitely do what you need, but it might be overkill. (It may also be Windows-only--I forget.)

I've also looked into a lot of browser-based options, and one of the better ones I found is HyperOffice. It's a lot more inexpensive, and obviously more cross-platform, but it's a little more cumbersome dealing with this stuff through the browser.

(No connection with either of those outfits, promise--haven't even settled on one myself yet.)

Other than that, just googling for "intranet solutions" will get you a whole mess of providers, if you want to check our some more.
posted by LairBob at 9:33 PM on July 4, 2004

I second the recommendation for WASTE. It's exactly what you're looking for.
posted by Jairus at 11:55 PM on July 4, 2004

Yeah, WASTE is pretty solid. A bit of a pain to set up, though.

And it is encrypted, which is why it's a pain.
posted by neckro23 at 12:51 AM on July 5, 2004

Yup. WASTE.
posted by adampsyche at 6:15 AM on July 5, 2004

Perfect, thanks guys.
posted by Aaorn at 8:03 AM on July 5, 2004