This IS the Avid L2: Re: [Avid-L2] File transfers?

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Re: [Avid-L2] File transfers?

Appreciate all the tips I got.

We've done some testing, found what works for us. Reporting here
for the next folk that have this problem. (Have it in the near
future, anyway... no doubt the landscape will keep changing.)

Cut to the chase: We settled on Google Drive.

Winner -- Google Drive
Annual cost about $120 for a 1TB Google Drive; big enough for us.
Speed: over 18GB an hour. (Downloading/synching on my end with
2gbps fiber. Australia client has 40mbps link; did not report
their upload/synch time to me. But was happy with Google Drive, too.)
Benefits: Speed, ease of use and very reasonable cost. If I leave
my machine on all the time (which I tend to do anyway) as the
client uploads files, they automatically start downloading. No
links to click, so downloads happen when I'm not even there.)

First Runner Up -- http://gigafile.nu
This is a Japanese language only service very similar to
YouSendIt, etc. But no account needed, and can send files up to
50GB, and it is absolutely free.
Annual cost: Free
Speed: Close second at about 15GB an hour
Benefits: Cost, speed. Loses a bit on ease of use as the page is
confusing and Japanese only and you need to get the download
links from email.

Second Runner Up -- Amazon's S3 storage on an AWS account; free
trial period.
Annual cost: Frankly, I found it hard to figure out. It's a much
more complicated product and I wasn't sure what services I would
be using. But it looked like it would be at least $720 a year for
the storage and bandwidth I'd need. That's very reasonable.
Speed: over 18GB an hour
Benefits: Speed.
Cons: I found their whole system very hard to grok. Very
different than anything I've used yet.

Also rans:

In-house FTP server.
Tried to set up my own server. Worked great on the internal
network, could not get at it from outside. After messing with
router port forwarding and free DNS servers for a few hours, I
gave up.

FTP on my web host
Easy, but slow. A bit over 3GB an hour only.

Digital Pigeon -- Trial period
Easy, but slow. Same as FTP at a bit over 3GB an hour.
Pricey compared to FTP.
Have to click email links, so does not run unattended.

I looked at some of the UDP services, but the prices... yikes. I
looked at some open source implementations, but they were beyond
my understanding.

Hope this info is of some use to someone, sometime!

Tim Selander
Tokyo, Japan

On 1/14/16, 13:49, Tim Selander selander@tkf.att.ne.jp [Avid-L2]
wrote:
> I've just taken on my first client who wants to send finished files --
> about 22 programs a month at 30+GB each -- back and forth between
> Australia and Japan.
>
> I know this comes up from time to time, but what are the good (fast and
> cheap?) services to accomplish this? Any advice appreciated!
>
> Tim Selander
> Tokyo, Japan
>
>