[OTR-users] OTR file transfers (again)

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 12:16 AM, Mansour Moufid
<mansourmoufid at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello list,
>
> I remember this topic being discussed previously but I've lost the
> thread. I wanted to share a simple idea:
>
> To send a file, encode it into plain text (e.g. base64) and send it
> over OTR as one big instant message. Then the OTR plugin on the other
> end could perhaps recognize some sort of marker (e.g. "THISISAFILE:"),
> and rather than display the data, save it somewhere.
>
> Seems this is how email attachments work, and OTR already handles
> lengthy messages, if I understand correctly. Just a thought.

Various IM systems rate limit messages sent through the service.   The
limit is high enough to not normally impact conversations, but a file
transfer isn't going to work too well.

Normal IM file transfers run directly from client to client (with all
the resulting nat traversal problems and difficulty using OTR
transport)