I recently needed to move about ten gigabytes of data from me to a friend and we used a new website service called reep.io. It’s quite a neat solution. It relies on a technology that has exists in many modern browsers, like Chrome, Firefox, and Opera called WebRTC.

The usual way to move such a large set of data from one place to another would probably best be mailing a USB memory stick or waiting to get together and then just sneaker-net the files from one place to another. The issue with a lot of online services that enable people to transfer files like this is that many of them are limited. Most of the online offerings cap out at around two gigabytes and then ask you to register either for a paid or free account to transfer more data. Services like Dropbox exist, but you need the storage space to create that public link to hand to your friend so they can download the data, plus it occupies the limited space in your Dropbox. With reep.io, there is no middleman. There are no limits. It’s browser to browser and secured by TLS. Is that a good thing? It’s better than nothing. The reason I don’t like any of the other services, even the free-to-use-please-register sites is because there is always this middleman irritation in the way, it’s inconvenient. Always having to be careful not to blow the limit on the transfer, or if it’s a large transfer like ten gigabytes, chopping up the data into whatever bite-sized chunk the service arbitrarily demands is very annoying.

To use this site, it’s dead simple. Visit reep.io, and then either click and drag the file you want to share or click on the File Add icon area to bring up a file open dialog box and find the file you want to share. Once set, the site generates a link that you can then send to anyone you wish to engage with a peer-to-peer file exchange. As long as you leave your browser running, the exchange will always work with that particular link. You don’t need any extra applications, and it works across platforms, so a Windows peer can send a file to a Mac client, for example. That there is no size limit is a huge value right there.

If you have a folder you want to share, you can ZIP it up and share that file. It’s easy to use, and because there are no middlemen, there aren’t any accounts to create, and thanks to TLS, nobody peeping over your shoulder.