File Sharing: new secure peer to peer file sharing fast and easy !

Speed Download features complete peer to peer filesharing (and now with encryption). Easily share any file you download, receive, or keep on your Mac with any other Speed Download user on your local network (via Bonjour) or remotely securily, easily, and with 1-click.

With Speed Download, you can also create and customize shared folders favorites. Share certain file types in one custom folder, others in another custom folder, and so forth. What's more, Speed Download gives you full user management control; create users, set passwords, and manage permissions for any of your shared folders.

Depending on the permissions you set, connected users will have access to any combination of the following: viewing your shared files, downloading your shared files onto their machines, and uploading files to your machine. Not only is this faster on speedy LAN connections, it is also a lot more bandwidth efficient. All machines you connect are neatly presented in Speed Download for fast and easy access and you can easily bookmark any of them for future use. All bookmarked connections will be accessible from the 'My Servers' section.

By default, SD will always try to create a secure connection between you and the SD machine that you are trying to connect to. It does this by setting a FingerPrint Key between you and that machine's Speed Download. If successful, the connection will be secure and encrypted. You will also see a closed 'lock' icon in the left pane next to that machine's name. If a secure connection is not possible, then an open lock icon will be displayed instead. Either way, file transfers between SD users remain fast and auto-resuming.

How to send a file to another Speed Download user :

From any section in Speed Download, clicking on the 'UP' arrow located on the same line as every entry in SD, will bring up the connections window so that you may choose where to send that file to.

Or,

Simply drag and drop any file from your hard disk onto SD and this will bring up the connections window so that you may choose where to send it to as well. Please note that that while you can upload this file to any Speed Download machine,you can also send it to any FTP, or webdav (i.e. iDisk, Public iDisk) as well if you prefer.

As you can see in the above screenshot, SD will neatly list all the servers that you are currently connected to under 'Active Connections' so that you can quickly and easily pick where you would like to upload your file to. As well, you have full access to all your bookmarked connections from the pop-up menu labelled 'Select from My Servers'. Further, you may opt to connect to an entirely different machine which is also possible by simply entering all the necessary details in order to connect to that server (i.e. server URL, username, and password).

A third way to send files to another Speed Download user is by using the 'Upload' icon from the toolbar. When pressed, this will bring up a window where you can choose any file(s) to send to another SD machine. Once selected, you will be prompted to select which SD machine you would like to send to.

It's THAT easy!

Two important things to note:

• Make sure the files you send are compressed. It doesn't matter what form of compression you use as long as the person you are sending to is able to unstuff the file you are sending.
• You don't need to be connected to a SD machine (i.e. have it listed in the left pane) in order to send a file to it. If you are that's also fine, but if you're not, it's not a problem. Sometimes you just want to send a quick file to someone, and that's exactly what you can do with SD.

When connected to another SD you can upload and download files from it (assuming you have permission to do so). After connecting to a Mac running Speed Download, clicking on that machine's entry in SD, will quickly display all shared files on that machine as you can see in the below screenshot.

All Speed Download machines you connect to (LAN and Remote) are immediately organized for easy and quick access in the left pane of SD as seen in the screenshot below.

To see what files the machine you are connected to has to offer, simply select it, and everything will be displayed in the right pane.

Right-click (control-click) on any entry and you are presented with a menu of options that you can use from.

• Start Download: will add the file to your download queue and download the file from its original server (i.e. http://www.yazsoft.com/files/file.zip).
• Queue Download: will add the file to the download queue for immediate downloading or for later downloading if your download queue is currently off.
• Copy URL to Clipboard: self explanatory.
• Add to Sensitive Servers: some servers out there may be older or on slower Internet connections and hence cannot handle the load of simultaneous connections to it. When you select this option, SD adds the domain for that file to the Sensitive Server location. What that does, is that it tells SD to only open 1 connection to that server (download rates may be slower in this case). The result is that the server to where you are connecting to is happy, and you can still get the file you want while enjoying all the benefits of SD. Note: you can remove a domain from the Sensitive server area by either right clicking on the file again (you will note that the CMM entry has changed to 'Remove from Sensitive Servers') or you can go into the Sensitive Servers section in the preferences, and remove the domain from there.
• Direct Transfer: this will download this file from the machine you are connected to. Note: you must have the proper permissions on the remote machine in order to transfer the file to your machine. Very important to note: GUEST uploading access is OFF by default. To allow 'Guest' users to send files to your machine, you must turn this option ON.
• View options: You can customize your columns by selecting by selection from a variety of categories made available to you. The columns are resizable and you may sort the list by any of the columns or reposition them anywhere you like.

Setting up File Sharing in Speed Download

There are several points to attend to when properly setting up file sharing in Speed Download. They are all very easy to setup and understand.

Very important to note: GUEST uploading and downloading access is OFF by default. To allow 'Guest' users to send files to your machine and/or download from your machine, you must turn these options ON.

• Received Files: This folder contains all files sent to you by other SD users. By default, this folder is located inside the default SD download folder. An important thing to note here is that users can only see files they have uploaded, as well as any files sent by Guest and those placed at the root level of the 'Received Files' folder. They cannot see the files uploaded by other non-guest users.
• Enable sharing on port: this option will turn file sharing ON or OFF in SD. As well, it is where you may set what port number you would like SD file sharing to work on. By default it's port 2550. Important to note: file transfering is always the default port + 1 (i.e. port 2551 in this case).
• Enable local Bonjour (Rendezvous) sharing: this option will turn file sharing ON or OFF for your local network. If ON, you will automatically see any machines on your local network running SD.
• Show Server Activity: This option is checked on by default so that you are alerted when someone starts download a file from you. A Server Activity window will come up giving you all necessary details.
• Add as many users as you like in this section. All users you create will appear on the left, any custom folders you have created in SD, will appear on the right. You can give every user customized access. For example you can give certain users access to a particular folder and prevent others from seeing/accessing that same folder. Clicking on each username will show you what permissions you have set for them.
• Speed Download also features the ability to limit the number of simultaneous downloading and uploading, as well as control the uploading and downloading speeds. This bandwidth control is important if you don't want Speed Download to use up all your bandwidth. That way, you will be able to do other Internet activities without any slowdowns.
• Disable unecrypted transfers. if checked on, SD will prevent any unsecure and unecrypted file transfer from taking place.

Note: in the right section of the file sharing preferences, you will notice a list of folders. These are all the custom folders that you created in SD. You can give each user customized access to any of these folders. Very important to remember is that these folders are simply virtual folders (more about that below). This means that they are not created on your hard disk like the 'Received Files' folder. These folders allow you to drag entries from within SD (i.e. from My Downloads) onto them. The purpose of these folders is to give you the flexibility of offering different files to different users.

• Custom folders: are virtual folders created in SD by selecting 'New Folder' from the Action menu in the lower left hand corner of the SD window. As mentioned above, these folders are not created on your hard disk. The purpose of these custom folders is to allow flexibility in organizing files that you downloaded with SD. As well, these folders can be shared and you can give customized access to any of these folders to any user (see above for creating users in the file sharing preference panel). Examples of such custom folders in the screenshot is the 'My Shared Stuff' that we created for the sake of this manual.
• You can also right click (control-click) on any folder you create, and select 'Share' (amongst other options) from the contextual menu to enable Sharing, and to set the Sharing permissions.

• Rename: allows you to edit the name of the custom folder.
• Remove: allows you to delete the custom folder.
• Clear Contents: allows you to delete all entries inside that custom folder.
• Refresh list: updates the list of items inside that custom folder.


• Share: makes that custom folder visible to all users that have access to it.
• Share Settings: takes you to the file sharing preference section of SD.


• Tips & Tricks: if you select more than one folder at a time, you will see the combined items of all the selected folders on the right.

If you select 'Share' from the contextual menu, you will be presented with a cascading menu displaying all the users that you have created in the file sharing section of the preferences. From there you can customize the type of access you would like to give to these users. Very important: users cannot upload to these folders. The only place that users can upload files to your machine is to the 'Received Files' folder folder.

For even more info on the new 'Received Files' section of Speed Download, please click here.

Note:The number ongoing downloads, uploads, and received files is immediately displayed next to each entry in SD as well as in the SD dock icon.