MCast

The simplest multicast file transfer app on earth ! ;) + pure python netcat (as fallback ?)

Pull data:

mcast

Push data:

mcast file.ext

Features

• transfer files of any size to multiple hosts at a time
• simple to use (even NetCat is more complex !)
• single file app, runs on any platform (pure Python)
• file corruption detected automatically

Limitations

• computers must be on the same network

  • nc.py tool featured for traditional tcp connections

• one file transfer at a time [TODO: fix this]

How to use it

receive

call mcast without argument

send

call mcast with file as argument, or "-" for stdin

There are two steps:

1. start program on each computer wanting to receive the file or content
2. start the program with the file as parameter on any computer of the network

On computers you want to send the file to

Run this command to receive data and show it on the console:

mcast

or, more common, saving the content to a file:

mcast > my_super_file.ext

or, unpack the transmitted tar archive:

mcast | tar xvf

On the computer owning the file to distribute

mcast path/to/file.ext

or, if you want to send multiple files using tar

tar cvf - path/to/send | mcast -

Developers

This app is supported and tested only under Linux, but patches for other OS are accepted.