[JDEV] Re: OOB filetransfer negotiation

[Jens Alfke]

On Monday, August 13, 2001, at 05:05 PM, Julie wrote:

>   From my understanding of the descriptions of the two iq tags, they 
> are used only
> to send the URL to the client.  The client then goes to the URL to 
> retrieve the
> file.  Am I right?  Is there anyway to do a direct client-to-client 
> file transfer?

Yes — run a tiny HTTP server on the sending client that can deliver the 
file to the recipient. Then the sender just creates a URL with its own 
IP address as the host. In my client I use a random port number and also 
make up a random 64-bit number to put in the URL before the name of the 
file, just to make it harder for a 3rd party to find the file (unless 
they intercept the Jabber message, in which case all bets are off.) So 
the URL I send would look like:
	http://my.ip.address:randomportnumber/sixteenrandomhexdigits/nameoffile
However, this only works if the receiver can make an HTTP connection to 
the sender, i.e. the sender is not behind a firewall or NAT.

--Jens