NEW YORK - Punch Networks, a hosted service that lets users share folders and files via the Web, this week introduced at Internet World Fall 2000 a new service that enables file sharing at the desktop level.
Instant Folders allows Windows 2000 users to select folders on their hard disks that can be shared with other users of the service, without having to manually upload files to a Web site. A 53K-byte file synchronizes files between the client and server on a scheduled basis. New files are uploaded to server as a whole, while existing files have only the changes in the file replicated, saving on bandwidth. A similar process is used to check for new or modified files at the server level.
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"It looks and feels a lot like peer-to-peer, but it's going through a server," says John Willams, vice president of marketing at Seattle Punch Networks. "By using a server in the middle, users can log on via the Web to check for files even if they're not on their own computer."
To use the service, all members of the collaborative group must have an Instant Folder client on their machine. After designating which folders to share, the user selects those colleagues that he wants to give access; Punch Network's client and server automatically handle the rest of the synchronization process.
Connections to the server use the HTTPS protocol and documents are encrypted during delivery using Secure Sockets Layer and stored with 128-bit encryption. If two users attempt to update the same document, Instant Folders sends out an alert before attempting to overwrite any files.
For those customers that don't want to use the hosted service, Punch Networks will be offering a packaged version of the software that runs on Solaris machines with an Oracle database, Williams says. The product will be available in a few weeks and will have a starting price of $25,000 for 1,000 users.
The Instant Folders service is free for the first 30 days, and then $49 per year thereafter for anyone that wants to continue creating new shared folders.
Punch Networks: www.punchnetworks.com
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