From File Copy to File Transfer (probably a new product)

[gth]

As a wish list item - and if you're really feeling ambitious above and beyond the current product...

What if the target system had an agent (or even just the same software) installed, and thus provided for an intelligent conversation with each end of network link?

You could then -

* Request a remote CRC calculation (and thus not transmit all the data back to the source system in order check a destination file's CRC).

* More importantly though, you could enable comparisons about what data got corrupted and only transmit what needs to be re-sent, if a file fails a CRC check (e.g. by doing CRC on separate chunks of the file in question)

* Compress data on the fly for certain non-compressed file types (.txt, .doc, etc)

* At the ultimate level, you could even achieve faster-than-link speeds if two files need to be copied and the second has identical chunks as the first (in which case the destination agent can just copy, say, chunk-37 from file#1 and use it as chunk-37 for file#2).

...probably makes more sense in my head, but give it a go.

[TGRMN Software]

Absolutely, that could be the next logical step in developing a file transferring application, however it also has some drawbacks:
- Probably a new custom protocol.
- Security !!!
- Having to install and manage the application on the target too.
- Various firewall issues if outside the LAN

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[gth]

I think your drawbacks list would probably be a feature list of version 2 of such a product. :)

Just trying to transfer over an already-secure link (say, a corporate network) is annoying when you're sending large files, even before the concerns you've listed. It's such a damn pain in the butt when things fall over.

There are a bunch of protocols already out there that have sliding window + CRC (remember zmodem over dialup? :) Hell, even taking a bittorrent-style approach could be possible, if you want to apply present-day bulk transfer techniques to this task.

Anyway, enough day dreaming. Once again - thanks for the quick responses.