Every now and then I want to share large files with someone else and I am always a bit reluctant to use cloud based services such as Dropbox for privacy reasons. With a recent software update of my Fritz.Box VDSL router, I finally have all that is necessary to share files and directories right from that box with other people without the need for a dedicated device in my home network.
While my Fritz Box 7390 already contains half a gigabyte of Flash for user files I've decided to connect a USB flash drive via the USB port for extra storage. That doesn't take much extra power and provides a couple of gigabytes of extra storage. Sharing files is then as easy as copying the file from my PC to the the network drive via a Windows network share or via the web interface and then getting a unique download by simply clicking on a button in the web interface.
Links to files and directories individual, so I can share different files with different people. And for the other side, getting the file is as simple as clicking on the link. Just what I wanted for years without using a dedicated box for the purpose in my home network. And with the 5 Mbit/s uplink speed of my VDSL connection, even big files can be transferred over the Internet in a very reasonable amount of time.
Great, another cloud service replaced with my own infrastructure!