Peer-to-peer file sharing

Conclusions

Sending and receiving data on the LAN is a task that can be handled quickly and efficiently using any of the solutions here. The only differences are in the feature scope, operation, and security aspects (see Table 1). In heterogeneous environments, where many users are only familiar with their GUI, command-line applications may be daunting, not least because of the codes to be entered in each case for data encryption. For occasional file transfers, even across operating system boundaries, programs with a graphical front end will tend to be the best choice. Syncthing occupies a special slot here; while it does not support single transfers, it keeps complete folders or directory hierarchies on the participating machines in sync.

Table 1

Peer-to-Peer Data Transfer Programs

 

Croc

NitroShare

Syncthing

Warpinator

Magic Wormhole

License

MIT

MIT

MPL 2.0

GPLv3

MIT

Command line

Yes

No

No

No

Yes

GUI

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Cross-platform

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

End-to-end encryption

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Resumption after interruption

Yes

No

No

No

No

Integration in file manager

No

Yes

No

No

No

Transfer individual files

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Transfer complete directories

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Data synchronization

No

No

Yes

No

No

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