Think fast: What’s the easiest way to send over 1GB of data to someone else via internet?
While you think about how to answer that, yes there is a legitimate need these days for people to send large amounts of data to each other. Contrary to popular belief, large data sent and received is not just porn, hacked/cracked programs and Hollywood movies. Photographers routinely need to send super-large images, musicians send super-large raw audio files of songs they’re working on to other musicians they’re collaborating with, and it goes without saying that videographers always send huge files.
If you want to send anything over 1GB in size to someone else, you’re going to have to find an inventive way of doing it, otherwise you will have to send the files by postal mail on DVDs – and I’m not kidding. I’ll explain the inventive ways in a moment, but first let’s look at our options.
Absolutely not possible without wasting hours if not days of time. On the high end, email systems will not permit more than 20MB file attachments and on the low end 5MB or even 2MB on seriously crappy mail servers.
Peer-To-Peer
You and the intended recipient could download and install Frostwire, privately connect to each other and send/receive files in that fashion, but there’s one major drawback: Unless you’re both using fiber optic-connected internet connections, both your computers will be slow as molasses during file transfers.
Seeding your own torrent
It’s easy enough to seed your own torrent for a file transfer, but both the seeding and having the recipient download the data takes ages to complete.
Shared Link from Cloud Storage
This actually works well, but the problem is bandwidth limitation on the cloud service’s side. Use too much data and the cloud service will kill the link.
Fire Sharing Service
This is your only option left – as long as the file you intend to send is under 1GB. MegaUpload is the only game in town as no other file sharer has a per-file limit that high. (If you’re thinking, "Skydrive, you fool!", wrong. They have a 50MB per-file cap.)
It is here that you learn very quickly there is a 1GB wall that’s very tough to bust unless you know how to get around it; for that you need to go into nerdy/geeky territory to get the job done.
If you have a file that’s over 1GB you need to send to someone else via internet, you have to split it first. The easiest way to do this is with 7-Zip:
When creating an archive, you purposely have the file split into 1GB pieces on creation so MegaUpload will accept it. Afterward you have to send each file individually. It’s also required that the recipient has 7-Zip installed and knows how to put the pieces together (which is easy) and extract the file once received.
Remember, the file split/MegaUpload method is the best (or should I say least worst) way of sending high volumes of data.
What’s the only good alternative? Paid options like Amazon’s S3 service. If going free, you must deal with the 1GB wall. It’s like the entire social internet is saying, "SHARE! SHARE! SHARE IT ALL… butonlyifunder1GB thanksverymuch…"
Give me a break.
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