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Pando – big file transfers made easy

Nick

Nick

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PandoIf you’ve ever had to publish, send or receive particularly large files, you’ll know that it can throw up all kinds of problems – crashed servers, blocked inboxes and transfers that suddenly just hang-up. Pando aims to take the pain out of this process and according to the developers, 3 million people agree that it does exactly that.

Pando is based on a P2P network that enables you to send files of up to 1GB in size by e-mail or by publishing it to the web. It supports all multimedia file types including video, audio and photos meaning it’s great for people who deal with audiovisual files regularly.

For most users, the major benefit will be with e-mail attachments and the good news is, there’s no need to change your existing e-mail client. Pando works by creating a torrent-like link file which you can then send in the body of your e-mail for the recipient to click on. There’s no need to be online when the recipient downloads the file and there’s no compression, FTP or dodgy web uploading applets to deal with. The reason you don’t need to be online is because Pando sends files to its “super-node” servers, which means that there’s always at least one “seeder” online at any given time. This seed is guaranteed for 14 days so even if you log off, your recipient can still view it. Obviously, the more people that share it too, the faster the download.

For those unfamiliar with FTP, Pando is fantastic since it works on the same principle as a Bittorrent client. Once the small interface is opened, you can drag and drop or select “add-file” to create a “.pando” file which you can then e-mail to whoever you want once it is uploaded.

The main drawback is that the recipient has to have Pando installed to receive the file. If you transfer files to someone regularly, this is not a problem but if it’s just the odd file you want to send, then it could be a nuisance to ask someone to install it just to see your file. Be warned also that Pando cannot guarantee security. If you need to send sensitive files then use a VPN network because anyone who knows what they are doing can easily stumble across your file and download it.

Whilst Pando is obviously open to abuse by sharing illegal files, most people go to the major Torrent sites to do that, so Pando is refreshingly free of any copyrighted material flying around and causing problems. Overall, it’s a great solution for those unfamiliar with FTP who need to send big files regularly.

Nick

Nick

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