# Suggestion Needed for Setting up File Sharing System at University



## mohityadavx (Nov 16, 2015)

Hey Folks,

Well at our university we do not have any file sharing system in place, and we are trying to convince the IT Department to put one in place. Since, they are not keen on implementing one or maybe they are just clueless (which is a real possibility) about file sharing systems in general, in order to initiate a real dialogue we will have to present a proposal as to how to go about it and how it will affect the internet infrastructure. 

The problem is that we do not have a wired (Ethernet based) LAN setup, we have the wireless network at the university and they think that these file sharing systems will affect the internet so they are not really in a mood to give it a go. I am equally clueless, so wanted to know if there is any way that we could go about it which ideally doesn't require much investment or minimal investment on part of the university.

Thanks!


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## Hrishi (Nov 17, 2015)

What kind of authentication system does your university uses to allow connectivity to it's lan resources?
And also depends on the kind of access level and confidentiality and availability of those files. 
Hosting a simple ftp server inside the network and granting user accounts for it is a basic method and easy to implement.

However in any case if your campus is utilizing the active directory authentication system then it may help in setting up a highly secure and accessible file sharing along with tons of feature.

Need to understand the existing infrastructure involved to suggest any changes.
#Number of users accessing the share.
#Type of access to the content. Are you trying to create a virtual library of contents ?
#How is the content going to be accessed ? Through personal computers or College machines ?
#Who is going to administer and distribute the access/permissions to content ?
#Budget ?
#How will your users like to access the share ? Over the web ? Windows Explorer ? fTP clients ? Etc...
#Type of contents and who will modify them ? Is everyone going to modify them or they only need read access and the modification access will be restricted to few users only ?


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## mohityadavx (Nov 17, 2015)

The university's wireless internet is protected using WPA2 Enterprise framework with AES encryption. They have also put in place a firewall by Fortinet in place. I was thinking of asking them  to allow P2P traffic but then they are skeptic that most of the folks would then leech network for torrents. Also, they were of the opinion, that even a local P2P network for file sharing would affect internet network. 

So here it is:-
#Number of users accessing the share. - ~2500
#Type of access to the content. Are you trying to create a virtual library of contents ? - Yes, the content primarily would be video files and documents (PDF/DOC)
#How is the content going to be accessed ? Through personal computers or College machines ? - Personal Computers
#Who is going to administer and distribute the access/permissions to content ? - We would prefer that its not regulated by administration as they don't want any more headache so yes students, something decentralized like these P2P sharing options would be great.
#Budget ? - I have no idea, but the lesser the money involved, more likely will be willing to implement it.
#How will your users like to access the share ? Over the web ? Windows Explorer ? fTP clients ? Etc... - No Preference but considering that the university primarily does not offer any science/engineering courses, something that is not complicated would be preferable, as most of the folks including me have very limited know how of technology. 
#Type of contents and who will modify them ? Is everyone going to modify them or they only need read access and the modification access will be restricted to few users only ? - Best option would be if each contributor has access to modify his content and other can merely access/download the content. If it is not possible, some of the student representatives will be more than willing to work like moderators. 

Thanks a lot for replying!


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## Hrishi (Nov 17, 2015)

To ensure that whatever content the community has to offer is available 24x7 , you will need a dedicated machine in place for data availability. This is difficult to implement if you go for a P2P profile of file sharing.
You might want to look into the Windows File Sharing System using SMB running on one or few particular hosts which are connected to the Network using high speed Ethernet connections and running 24x7. Someone needs to be monitoring these machines as they will function as your file severs running in the network all the time.
This has a lot of options and features to offer but comes at a considerable price tag. If your university wants to offer the file sharing at their expenses , then this might be a good option to consider. This a similar kind of set-up large corporates and university use for sharing their commonly used contents.

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If it's just within the users itself then some simple application like *D-LAN/LanShark* might be very helpful. There are tons of applications like this for LAN file sharing. This is not exactly a P2P.
Just needs to be installed on every host who would like to participate in sharing or reading the contents.

For people who need to read the content they just need to launch the application and it will display the network resources shared by other users using this application. 
If they need to share the content on their own PC , they will need to configure it at their own machine with read/only or modify access. 
This however , will cause problems when the person sharing the content turns off his machine. The data will not be available to anyone else in the network as it's residing on this machine.

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It's also possible to use Lan Sharing through .torrents.Only difference is that you need to dedicate a machine for this purpose which will function as a tracker in the local area network. This machine needs to have a static IP set for it and should ideally be connected through Ethernet.
A web portal can be designed similar to pir***ba which will allow users to upload and download torrents and keep track of existing ones. This portal should ideally be hosted on the tracker machine itself for efficiency.  Also whenever someone is going to create a new torrent they just need to add the local tracker in the torrent.

The big deal with this is that whether your university will allow such p2p in first place ? This needs the firewall to be re-configured and allow certain kind of traffic involved. There are several protocols that might be used to set-up a solid p2p network.
And the traffic utilization will fluctuate a lot based on the leeching and seeding.


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## mohityadavx (Nov 17, 2015)

Hey,

Thanks a lot for listing out all the possible alternatives. I think we would go for the second option (LANSHARK, D-LAN etc) as it requires minimal administrative assistance, at max I think we will need to get some ports unblocked but that should not be problematic.
The only concern that is suppose if I put up a file on cloud say Google Drive and give link to everybody to download it, using uni's wireless LAN called 'ABC'. Is this the same as getting a file using any of these software (D-LAN/LANSHARK) from someone connected to network 'ABC' with regard to load on network and bandwidth consumption. I ask this because our accounts are restricted on basis of consumption of data (2 GB per day).

EDIT 
So just tried both LANShark and D-LAN. D-LAN didnt work will ask them to unblock those ports, and enable UDP multicast (whatever that may mean). LANShark is working but its terribly slow, its infinitely faster to just download a file from the internet, any idea why this is happening.


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## Faun (Nov 17, 2015)

Hrishi said:


> A web portal can be designed similar to *pir***ba *which will allow users to upload and download torrents and keep track of existing ones. This portal should ideally be hosted on the tracker machine itself for efficiency.  Also whenever someone is going to create a new torrent they just need to add the local tracker in the torrent.



What is pi***ba ?


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## mohityadavx (Nov 17, 2015)

^Mate cut him slack, its just a typo, I am pretty confident that you know what it means but anyways I will just write down what apparently seems to be unmentionable on the forum, 'Piratebay'.


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