sharing over LAN

Are your users going to be downloading from an intranet? If so, I think you can do it as if you were setting up a download page on the internet (or maybe you want a mock FTP?). If not, would it be too simple to just copy and paste (or have a script do it) from a public folder on your computer?

Stevo

see...i have seen some ppl sharing files over net work with some their ip address like (http& ftp)://IP address/files here. how can i do it?

Just run a webserver on the remote computer where the files are and use your browser to grab the files. You can also do uploading with CGI and a script. Apache would be the best bet. You could also just set up an FTP daemon on the remote computer and do something similar.

There are a lot of ways to successfully share files/folders across a network, but the best way in your case might depend on what you mean by "i am connected witha LAN and this LAN is further connected to another LAN and so on .."

Are these two LAN's (are there just two LAN's involved here?) directly connected to each other, essentially creating a single LAN, or are one or more routers involved? Is the Internet involved? Are you trying to share a folder on your PC, or are you trying to set up an FTP server, or what? Describe your architecture so that the best method can rise to the top.

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:23:16 -0000, snipped-for-privacy@spam.invalid

directly

server,

rise

All LANs (not just 2 LANs...but more than that) are not a part of single LAN and also more than one routers are involved. As far as file sharing is concerned there is no internet involved but some LAN having there own internet connections. I am trying to setup FTP server.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ About my network?? Its Cable net connection and every area has one of its own network and some how these networks are connected with each other. What i know, in my area the cable net provider has setup a LAN network(Delta-D, consists of 25 computers) and i am part of it. This Network doesn't have internet connection of its own but it is shared with a another network(DELTANET, i call it mother network). It also has Delta A, B and C. There are 3 other network(Fastmedia, Bluelines, Citynet etc) which i know are connected (don't know how)with this network as i can access their FTP and can also chat with users via Vypress Chat(even when internet is not working).

If you can't properly set up the routers to prevent external access to allow internal file sharing, then the best bet is to use internal webservers (Apache would be a good choice) on the machines that will be doing the sharing.

FTP daemons would also work and you should still be able to use your friendly browser to do the work of downloading files if things are set up right - not sure about uploading though, you may need to go with webserver CGI if you go from a browser client.

Ok, FTP servers are pretty straightforward. Install the server software, tell it which port to listen on, (the default is 21 but you may have reasons to change that, especially if you don't want everyone stumbling across it on the first day), then set up one or more user accounts and specify their respective directories. You'll be able to access your FTP server by it's LAN and WAN IP, while others will be able to access it by its WAN IP only, unless you do something like dyndns that maps a host name to your dynamic IP, in which case others will be able to access it by its host name.

Here's a possible link, called "Beginners Guides: Setting up an FTP Server in WinXP". Regardless of your OS, there are guides available; just Google for them.

I only have experience with Serv-U, but WS_FTP Server is also popular, as well as a large handful of free options.

If you have specific questions, fire away and someone will likely come along to help. :-)

On Thu, 15 Mar 2007 01:00:43 -0000, snipped-for-privacy@spam.invalid

popular,

ok i followed step by step and did everything BUT

didn't understand what it says... Now what will be the address the other will use to access my files??

If all of those things have been completed successfully, you're ready to access your router and forward the appropriate port to the PC that's acting as your FTP server. The specific steps to do port forwarding in your router will depend on the router, but basically you're telling the router that if it receives a request on Port 21, for example, it should forward that request to the IP address of the FTP server. Otherwise, the router will simply block the connection. Note that you don't necessarily have to use the default Port 21. Using another obscure port will add a (very) small amount of security through obscurity.

If you plan to keep your FTP server available across one or more PC reboots, you might consider assigning a static IP address to that PC to make sure that it doesn't receive a different IP (via DHCP) which would cause the port forwarding rules to require a corresponding change.

The address OTHERS will use to access your FTP server is your WAN IP address, which can be found by surfing to a site such as

The address that YOU might use is your LAN IP address, which is the same address you configured in the router under the port forwarding tab. You should also be able to use your WAN IP address for your local access, which is less efficient but ensures that your port forwarding rule is correct.

Hope this helps.