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Ask HN: Is it feasible to serve up a remote file for a file download link?

by codingclaws on 6/21/24, 1:59 AM with 5 comments

Say you want to have links on your site that download files, but the files are on a remote server relative to the web server.

If the web server has to first download the file from the remote server and only then send it to the browser, then it seems like there would be a browser stall while the web server downloaded the file behind the scenes. Basically, a double download with no user feedback during the first download.

Instead, I implemented it with file streams. There's an SSH file stream and then I pipe that into the HTTP response to the browser. The only problem with this is that the download speed it really bad. Do SSH file streams kill download speed? Or was it just the SSH file stream lib that I used?

Is there another way to do this?

Is it even possible to seamlessly do something like this? Or is my only option to use local files and ditch the remote server?

  • by db48x on 6/21/24, 6:59 AM

    That’s a clever solution, but you’re an idiot for trying it when there are simpler and more obvious solutions. Just put an HTTP daemon on that other server, point a domain at it, and link to the files there.

  • by ttyprintk on 6/21/24, 4:24 AM

    If it’s not media (I don’t know why you’re streaming) then CloudFlare considers 512MB small-enough to CDN for free.

  • by JojoFatsani on 6/21/24, 2:38 AM

    Look up CDNs.