I was wondering if anyone had suggestions for the best way to serve files from a win box for friends and family members is? I was thinking of taking the FTP approach, but I'm really out of touch with what programs (or protocols) are good/secure for this purpose.

TF

are you wanting to share files locally (ie with other users on the same LAN)? I'd go with SMB (normal windows file-sharing) for this, unless they're wanting to access the files from a different OS.. don't know anything about Mac support of SMB, but the linux support is ok...

if you're looking to serve files from a remote location, FTP is fine.. there're plenty of free/crackable FTP servers that are out there (ServU comes to mind, but it's been a while since I did any windows server stuff)...

of course, you cannot run a file server from the UMR network that would be accessible from outside the network (by your friends/family)... you'd need the UMR network powers-that-be to give you a port-through.. and I've no idea how you'd be able to swing that what I do is to leave a server running back home, and upload whatever I want to that server, so that others can have access to it.

This would be what I'm interested in doing but I wonder if FTP is still the best method for small scale file serving. I'm not on campus so that won't be much of a problem. I'm just looking for some advice from someone who has had some experience in this realm.