Large File Advice

Question

I have to deliver 2-ish GB media files to customers (zipped up) after purchase. Any advice on how to deliver such big files to the general population (translated: novice internet users who will not be savvy enough to use FTP or something).

We can build a download manager for Windows users, but I doubt we'll be able to get one for Mac/Linux. Is there a standard solution I don't know about?

Thanks!

Mandatory XKCD: [http://www.xkcd.com/949/](http://www.xkcd.com/949/) — Widor, Oct 05 '11 at 16:58
2GB isn't **that** much these days... IMHO, an HTTP link would do... — PJK, Oct 05 '11 at 17:01
+1 for relevant xkcd. as for just winging it on HTTP, i'm not so sure - there has to be a lot of people on <1Mb/sec bandwidth who would go crazy (especially having paid for this download). — netricate, Oct 05 '11 at 17:53

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 05 '11 at 17:02

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I'd say have them as a .torrent file. That way people can continue where they left off, and don't have to start over. You can divide the file into a bunch of rar's or .r01-.r20 and it'll help with distribution. THe bottom line is you don't want people to keep having to start over, this can be frustrating. With a .torrent is viable, especially if you don't want to use FTP.

Windows doesn't have a built in .torrent handler, but I'm sure Linux does. OS X I'm not sure about either.

answered Oct 05 '11 at 17:02

apollosoftware.org

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Ummm, he said novice users.... Those are people who believe that their IE is the Internet.... – PJK Oct 05 '11 at 17:07
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haha. those that are using IE in the first place definitely don't know any better. – apollosoftware.org Oct 05 '11 at 17:08
yes, unfortunately I don't think i can use .torrent because it's not advanced users. good thought though. – netricate Oct 05 '11 at 17:51

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 06 '11 at 06:34

For most users on a high speed internet connection, novice or not, a direct HTTP download link is likely sufficient. Just be sure that your HTTP responses for both HEAD and GET return the Content-Length header so that users get an accurate progress bar for their download.

In my opinion, the only other reasonable option for novices is probably a download manager. You could of course build your own (possibly using a product like Real Basic to quickly code for all 3 platforms)

There are a number of companies out there that have off the shelf "download assistants" as well. May want to take a look at what companies like Adobe are using for their software downloads.

EDIT: Turns out Adobe uses a custom AIR application for their "download assistant" which is a cross platform option as well.

Large File Advice

2 Answers2