HFS and PageKite (public HFS w/o router reconfiguration)

[Bjarni R. Einarsson]

Hi! Thanks for HFS!

Just thought I'd post a quick success-report about using HFS with my project, PageKite (on win 7). PageKite is Free software (AGPL license) for making HTTP servers visible to the wider Internet without having to poke holes in firewalls. I think it's an excellent companion to HFS (I already recommend HFS on the project's website).

This is what I did to get PageKite up and running:

   1. Installed HFS
   2. Installed Python
   3. Signed up at http://pagekite.net/ for a test account
   4. Downloaded pagekite.py and a pagekite.cfg
   5. Moved pagekite.py and pagekite.cfg to C:\Users\Bjarni
   6. Ran both pagekite.py and HFS.exe

I had to give both programs permission to bypass the firewall, but after following the above, my HFS server was visible to the wider Internet.

The disadvantage to this approach, is relying on the remote front-end provided by pagekite.net (you could run your own, but it would still be a detour for your traffic). On the other hand, the advantage is it works almost anywhere, even from behind hostile firewalls or routers which you don't have permission to reconfigure. And the server ends up with a nice name in DNS with no funny port numbers in the URLs.

PageKite is pretty new and a little rough around the edges - in the future we'd like to be a bit more user friendly so steps 2, 4 and 5 above can be combined into a single step, and the UI could use some work - but it does work pretty well and I thought you might be interested in taking a look.  It might at some point be interesting for our projects to work together - adding direct support for the PageKite protocol to HFS for example would be pretty cool.

[~GeeS~]

Hi,

Thanks for posting, this looks extremely interesting! I will give it a try!

Was looking for that concept for years ... it seems you found a very simple solution for serving across hostile firewalls.
This will give censors some headaches, lol.

Edit:
Just did some "research": This project deserves full support!
Because:
- it supports WIN, Linux & Mac
- the people behind the concept are "world class" in every aspect

PageKite is a system for running web servers on machines without a direct connection to the Internet, such as mobile devices or computers behind restrictive firewalls.

Without pageKite, this is a surprisingly difficult problem. In spite of the fact that powerful computers and high-speed Internet connections are now the norm in many places, technicalities generally conspire to make servers on home or mobile machines largely unreachable from the wider Internet - and therefore useless.

These technicalities - firewalls, NAT, IP addresses, DNS - are the problems pageKite aims to simplify and solve.

http://pagekite.net/docs/

I tried to achieve that with good old Proxomitron, but failed.

@ Bjarni: Thanks again for posting here & thank you for the recognition you give to HFS.

 "[...] it goes right through most firewalls, making your personal website visible even when you are using public WiFi or a 3G Internet connection."
Is this what i think it is: war-serving? 

Which reminds me to watch the second part of the documentary from VPRO









 

[HerraBRE]

Thanks for the kind words!

I'd be a little wary of the "war-serving" label though - even if you are using PageKite, you are still legally liable for what you put on-line, and your front-end provider can probably be compelled by law to disclose your identity to the authorities or even shut down your account...

PageKite isn't some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card. 

Of course, if you get evicted from one front-end provider, nothing prevents you from moving to another one, or running your own front-end somewhere else. If you set up your DNS records carefully, your visitors might not even notice that you've moved.

For the pagekite.net service, we are still working through exactly what the legal situation is, what our obligations would be if we are served with a notice of copyright infringement, for example.

I personally think that if we are required to shut down an entire account because of one or two infringing files, that would be overreaching and disproportionate and would fight that to the best of my ability. If the account is used for nothing else... well... I don't know what would happen, to be honest.  When it comes to plain censorship (not copyright infringement), things are a bit different. I cannot see many situations where I would be willing to shut down an account to accommodate that. But that doesn't mean I couldn't be forced to. As a start-up, we are still small and quite vulnerable to DDoS, for example. Given time and many happy users, that will hopefully change...

[~GeeS~]

Hi,

you are right. PageKite deserves a better label than that. I got your point an i am fully aware about it.
As you mentioned in your blog, the internet today is still focused on consuming information than sharing information. And even when information is shared, this data are "co-owned" by the hosting corporations. ...

Back to topic:

I made a test account, installed Python 2.7, PageKite and HFS beta on my laptop (corporate Win XP Pro).
My wireless connection is firewalled and ...

... HFS is perfectly reachable from the outside world!!! It took less than 10 minutes. Just follow the instructions.
... portforwarding is not necessary anymore. If you can browse, you can serve,too.

The value of this tool can not be overemphasized!

[rejetto]

i got no time these days to give a deep look into your project, but you are welcome here and good luck with it.
i will stick this topic for a while.