Simple, Cross Platform P2P File Sharing via 802.11b?

apago asks: "I travel alot on business and always need to exchange files with other people. We are always trying to figure out the best way to link two or more PC or Mac systems together. I carry regular and crossover cables and a small hub. Even then everyone has to configure a temp. IP address or have someone running a DHCP server. Most of these people have wireless 802.11b capability. Is there a way to share files between OSs using 802.11b without having to configure a temporary network setup? The autodiscovery and configuration of Bluetooth and ZeroConf sound like a good start. I like the easy of use of P2P apps." Does 802.11b need a TCP/IP stack to work? Could a low-profile stack, designed around ease-of-use, be used instead (all you would need to connect to the network would be the SSID, for example)?

Comments

Rendezvous does this

[foobar104]

I know this isn't the be-all solution you're looking for, but be aware that Rendezvous does this very thing in Mac OS X 10.2. Since Rendezvous (which is just Apple's trademark for ZeroConf) is an open standard, it could in theory be implemented on any OS.

The best part of Rendezvous, in my opinion, is the serverless name resolution for self-assigned IPs. For example, if your computer looks for a DHCP server and fails to find one, it assigns itself an IP address starting with 169.254. Every other computer is supposed to self-assign the same way. Normally, that's not useful, because you have to get IPs from every user before you can talk, but Rendezvous makes it possible to refer to those machines by name.

At that point, any TCP-based program will work. FTP is my favorite, of course, but AppleShare over IP works just as well going Mac to Mac. I'm not sure what the Windows to Windows options are.

Like I said, I know this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but I think it could get you close.

Forget 802.11b for causual networks; use USB CF

[leighklotz]

Get a $20 USB compact flash interface and use CF cards formatted as DOS FAT.
They work on Win 98 and up, Macs, and Linux, and some other exotics as well.
(Some old versions of Linux don't support some cheaper USB CF interfaces, but newer ones do.) For extra measure, get a PCMCIA CF card adapter; they cost about $10 new or $1 at a garage sale.

Re:Forget 802.11b for causual networks; use USB CF

[kableh]

I have a 128 MB CF card, and it has saved my butt a number of times, as well as preventing me from having to burn a CD at times. However, have you tried one of those USB pen drives that just hooks right into th e USB port? A couple of people around here have them, and it seems like a great idea. Drive support under Windows is native, though I don't know about the Linux support.

APIPA is your friend

[Gruturo]

Ever had one interface configured as DHCP but (due to DHCP unavailability) found out that it automagically picked an address in the 169.254.0.0/16 range?

That's APIPA (Automatic Private IP Assignment) kicking in, newer M$ and Mac OSes (dunno about Linux, never had one configured at the wrong end of the DHCP protocol :-) ) automatically pick an IP from that range (with the last 2 octets derived from the MAC address, I guess), so that if you have a number of computers networked together, know nothing about IP and of course don't have a DHCP daemon running, they will just see each other, saving Microsoft and Apple customer support a phone call.

So, provided that you have to swap files only between Win98+, 2000/XP or MacOS, just leave everything on DHCP and in a couple minutes the windows boxes happily start spamming out advertisement SMB packets and will eventually see each other.

My 0.02