Quick background: we have clients that occasionally need to send us very large files (up to 1gb). We need a secure, quick, and easy way to make this happen. FTP was designed for this, and HTTP still feels kludgy. I'm looking into 3rd party components, services, plugins, as well as considering a custom approach. At the end of this post are a few links out to some other HTTP solutions, and some blog posts on the topic. Here is my initial solution, which uses FTP, hands the control over to our users (as opposed to the help desk), and gives us responsibility for the process, but requires the end-user to download an FTP client for their transfer. Not sure yet if this is a good trade-off...
Business Process for Large File Transfers with FTP
Request: From lawyer, from their Marketing Dashboard:
- Client and Project ID
- Email of contact at client
- Duration to keep site active
- Additional Description/Instructions
Submit: (Use scriptable FTP server like FileZilla)
- Create FTP Directory for client: \\internetServer\FTPshare\clientProjectId
- Create user in FTP Server, add read-only privs to directory
- Create Destination Directory for File on File server \\fileserver\files\FTP\clientIProjectId
- Add a monitor for the file upload to complete (internal service we have running) and notify lawyer when done
- Email client with URL to page with FTP client download link & instructions
Receive: (FileWatcher service sees new file is complete)
- Move file into Destination Directory on file server
- Remove FTP directory, instance, external user acct
- Email lawyer to notify that file is transferred, with link to file on file server
Existing solutions and posts on the topic:
Interestingly, TechCrunch made 2 announcements today related to uploading large files over http, regarding drop.io, and YouSendIt.
Outlook (as of today!)
YouSendIt Outlook Plugin, [TechCrunch announcement]
HTTP Services:
YouSendIt
Drop.io
HTTP Custom controls:
AJAX Uploader
JFileUpload
NeatUpload ASP.Net Component
Telerik's RadUpload
Blog Posts:
File Upload With ASP.Net
Why Are Web Uploads So Painful?
The Dark Side of File Uploads
Large file uploads in ASP.NET
Print | posted on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 11:32 AM