Distrans is a simple and very basic (atm) secure file transfer program utilizing the Veilid secure network. This is mainly just a technology demonstrator right now - showing how something like bit torrent could work over a secure, DHT-based network - but it works surprisingly well.
Right now, you can seed a single file and as long as distrans is up and running with that seed, anyone can grab it from the network using the provided hashcode. If you want to seed multiple files, you can just background the process or get real familiar with tmux.
Multi-file seeding and a tracker-like index are on the roadmap, so it will be exciting to see how this project develops. Just goes to show yet another way that the Veilid protocol can be used to help us take back the Internet we were promised!
For anyone here who hasn’t tried it. This is well worth playing with. Compared with some of the early fiddling I experienced with Veilid Chat this was a straightforward install and use.
Living in the weird world we do having access to an anonymous file transfer tool that doesn’t expose file name or sender information in the sharing ID could become a useful thing to have on hand, and every extra user helps test the Veilid concept!
I think that this is one of the things I like about this, and I’m hoping that some Rustaceans out there will either help contribute to implementing the multiplexing portion of the framework that’s there or that folks will crack open this demo utility and make more full-featured things.
But knowing that there’s a point-to-point, p2p, secure and encrypted way to share files is a game-changer and all it really needs is a way to be easy enough for less-technical people to fire up and run.
What I would really, really like to see is the integration of distrans and veilidchat into a single app to where you can transfer files via a chat interface, or have chats running alongside “distribution channels” or trackers of some sort. In time, maybe that dream will become a reality but since I don’t know shit about UIs and UI-creation frameworks, it ain’t gonna be me that does it anytime soon.
Keeping an eye on this. For me, the best way to learn is “I need to do t something, this tool lets me do it, so first I need to learn how to use this tool”. Waiting for Veilid to be this for me
And just as an aside, this project is set to be renamed to “stigmerge” in the near future, as the developer determined the name “distrans” to be somewhat socially problematic (even though it’s a Dune reference).
I don’t know if the repo name is going to change (but it likely will), but the binary name most certainly will.
Yeah. Veilid is just a protocol basically secure, P2P communication via distributed hash table, so in and of itself, it’s not particularly useful or remarkable. Definitely an “enabling” technology, and the efficiency and efficacy of same is directly related to adoption and the number of DHT nodes available to store and serve information.
But if VeilidChat could get a couple more developers and a lot more love, and things like VeilScale and distrans/stigmerge keep growing and getting that same love, then it seems like we might be on our way towards getting some movement in a positive direction happening.
My biggest hurdle is that veilid is written in Rust, which I don’t know and learning it well enough to either contribute to Veilid or write something on top of it has been challenging. I have thought about writing a Java API into veilid but again, that requires understanding rust significantly well enough to do so.
