The Network for n00bs
1. Go to your browser and type in bjordan.stu
2. This link won't work until you're registered and online at Wes, but bookmark it anyway--You'll use it often.
3. When the link is up, it will look like a search engine. This is SMBsearch. Type something you want in the box. Say, "Kissing the Lipless."
4. Press enter.
5. A list will pop up. The length of the list depends on the number of people on the Network who have what you're looking for. In this case, each line will look something like \\HELLOWORLD\My Shared Folder\Music\Shins - Kissing the Lipless.mp3
- \\_____ is whatever name that person has decided to name their computer. For instance, I'm \\ISHUKU.
- Windows: In XP, paste it directly into the address bar of your browser. In 2000, you may have to Start -> Run. It should then download to your desktop. You can also browse all of that person's offerings by just entering "\\" followed by their computer name.
- Mac: In the finder, hit control-K (or go to the Go menu and choose Connect to Server.) In the box marked "Server Address," enter "smb://" followed by the computer name (e.g. "smb://cthulhu"). You'll be prompted to log in to that computer as if it were a server. Just use whatever default setting is offered. Sometimes people have multiple drives loaded, e.g. "Movies," "Music," "Pictures of Ninjas," etc. Choose one. It'll load as a network drive, with an icon appearing on your desktop.
Notes:
The Wesleyan network is blindingly fast. I'm talking a 700mb file transfer in ~5 minutes. Ditto if you're sending someone a file over AIM, as long as they're also on the network. However, your torrents will run mind-numbingly slowly, if at all, which is more the reason to just use SMBsearch. You can use it to find literally everything--Music, movies, tv shows, porn, etc., though if you search for "porn" you'll end up with mostly New Pornographers songs.
Woodframes, including most of the program houses, are not on the network. However, you can access it from any off-campus location (including at home!) with VPN--Click here for the download and installation/usage instructions.
Finally, if for some reason you're looking for a song and can't find it on the Network, try searching at The Hype Machine or Dogpile. Alternately, you can just do a Google crawl by entering the following query into Google followed by whatever you're looking for:
-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(mp3)
Good luck and godspeed!
11 comments:
A tip to help with blindingly-slow torrents: Get a client that can encrypt the transfer. Everything looks the same when it's encrypted, so the download won't be set to a low priority.
However, janet's tip is strongly disrecommended, because it seriously slows down the entire network and uses a ton of bandwidth. Consequently, when the good people at ITS do find someone doing it, they tend to get pissed and make things on your computer as slow as possible for you :P
Regarding the woodframe note -- the network is usable over VPN, but very slow (at least, compared to a computer that's actually on ResNet). Torrents, however, are very, very fast.
i dunno, im in the lab and i cannot use the \\COMPUTER_NAME method
u have any idea ?
With Mac, when i crashed into a network that requires pw, i can enter mine. But with Windows, there was just an alert.
>"< Thanks for your help (if any)
Hey I visited Wesleyan yesterday and saw this ridiculously awesome way of sharing music. I don't have any experience in programing but I learn fast. If it's possible, I'd really appreciate your help in creating something like that here at Vassar College.
Thank you!
-Alex alrodabaugh@vassar.edu
p.s. the internet here is horridly horridly slow. and I'm incredibly jealous.
On the new network search (pcao) how do you dowload stuff on a mac? The smb prefix doesn't seem to be working.
for people using VPN in woodframes, i remember on agwilliams there was a box which you could change the name of the computer you're downloading from into a # (IP). is there any way to do this with pcao's site?
You can try this simple file and unprotected directory search engine (not only mp3), it is based on google co-op and search for "Index of /":
http://searchable.awardspace.com/
I am a secret 2011-er with over 200 gigs of music, pre-network. watch out.
Quick question: I just bought an external hard drive to store all my music and movies, but because I use a Macbook, the harddrive uses the HFS+ format. Because most pee cees cant recognize this format, will sharing files over the Network still work? What are the disadvantages of reformatting the HDD as a bi-platform friendly FAT32?
Also, I used to keep most of my DVDs in ISO form, which is nice in that it preserves the quality and the menus, but bad in that its freaking enormous. Is there a standard rip quality/setting for DVDs? Right now im using handbrake and specifying an output of a 1.4GB mpeg file that should run easily on both Macs and PCs (and even iPods). Should I shrink the file size/use an encoder (DivX or the like)?
Thanks so much in advance!
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