I own a new recording studio and we have been using cloud storage like Dropbox to send large files to our clients. However, I feel there must be a more practical solution that having to wait hours for the files to upload to dropbox in order for a client to download them.
I thought there might be some simple Ubuntu style OS that I could install on a junk PC. Then from that PC I’d be able to plug in a USB containing the files, place them in a folder and then share that folder to my client over the net.
Obviously security is very important as we would only want only recipient and their invited guests to have access to that folder and no one else. The other thing that I imagine may be an issue is that of the dynamic IP address which our ISP provides. Would I need to have a static IP address for such a thing should it exist?
so you’re talking about something like an FTP server, webserver, or VPN ?
In which case YES you’d want a static IP … it can be achieved with a dynamic DNS service and client, such as:
But it would be easier, and more stable with a static IP.
Don’t expect it to be easy to set up though, unless you’re comfortable with the Linux command line, at least for the openvpn setup and key generation.
But once set up it should be very stable, and as everything is being sent over an encrypted tunnel, and only PC’s that have the correct key stored can connect … pretty damn secure too.
Or am I misunderstanding you, and you’re just after another cloud storage … like dropbox, where you have to upload stuff to the cloud ?
Another option might be to have a NAS drive by someone like Buffalo … they supply a dynamic DNS service with their NAS drives that allow access over the interweb.
something like:
or if you need the security of raid 1 drive mirroring … so if one drive fails, you don’t loose anything:
There’s a bittorrent filesharing program I saw featured on Linux Action Show it’s supposed to be much faster than dropbox it offers unlimited filesize and it’s free, just cant remember what It’s called but it sounds like it might just what your looking for, I’ll look through previous episodes of LAS and get back to you, alternatively you can have a look yourself http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/