Peer-2-Peer LAN File Sharing

File sharing is one of the most popular category of applications, which computer users all over the world use. Even in office, we use IM clients like Yahoo! Messenger or Google Talk to transfer files. This is true for even users working in the same LAN also. In this article, I will introduce you to two effective P2P LAN File Sharing Applications.

Giver

Giver GNOME File Sharing

Giver is a nice application which comes bundled, with new Ubuntu 8.10. This is a very nice application and is very simple to use. It discovers users in the LAN and you can share files with them with a simple mouse click. There are not too many options in this application, but it is a nice application with a simple User Interface. You can give 11/10 for its very simple user interface.The new version of Giver integrates with Tomboy notes and you can share notes using drag and drop. If the other user accepts the note, the new note will be added to the receiver’s Tomboy notes.

You can find more details about this at http://code.google.com/p/giver/. The only problem with this application is that this works only in Linux, as Windows and Mac OS X versions are still not available.

LAN Shark

LAN Shark File Sharing

LAN Shark is another tool for P2P file sharing over a LAN. But this tool is Cross Platform and works in Linux as well as Windows. This tool has more configuration options and a window showing uploads, downloads. You can even search for files shared by other users and select what you want to download. Another interesting addition over Giver is a web interface and embedded web server. You can find more details about this tool at http://lanshark.29a.ch/