Help setting up FFS to use webdav

[aznarepse]

Hi, I am trying to synchronize a small star configuration (many to one to
many) where all have the same content in a folder. They are all windows XP or
2003 in different locations; the 2003 is at my home and two or three nodes
elsewhere.. I tried first with a windows VPN between them, the centre being
the 2003 and the others conecting to the VPN where; the server is running FFS
and the clients have a shared folder that is mapped as a drive in the server.
It is so, so ridiculously slow that becomes impractical. I believe it is a
problem with the SBM protocol and the latency of the network. The result is
about 1 hour to synchronize a pair of folders with about 100 very small files,
1Kb ish (total of 123Kb)
I was thinking that the solution could be using webdav and setting IIS on the
clients machines and publish the shared folder as a webfolder.

I have tried it and found the following probems:
-FFS does not take uris on its own..(?)
-I cannot access a webfolder in My Network Places from FFS.
-When trying to map a web folder to a letter volume, the server is quite funny. I have tried with two clients and with one, it happily maps the webfolder but with the other it refuses givin a "The Network path http://whatever/webdav could not be found" and the clients have identical configurations and can both be accessed through webfolders or a browser. However, other machine at home can map the one that the 2003 doesn't like without problems but then it doesn't like the other one... Windows redirector is not really the option I think... very temperamental!
-I have tried a tool from Novel called NetDrive and it works in some machines but I have got Blue screens in the 2003...:(
My question is:
-Is there a way to work with FFS and webdav directly?
-if not, what would be the way?
-Any recommended tool to support webdav with FFS in a 2003 box?


Many thanks in advance.

All the best,
Adan

[Zenju]

> FFS does not take uris on its own..(?)


Probably not. FFS passes the path down to Windows kernel API (after certain
formatting like macro resolution) and let's it handle it, if it can:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/en-/nus/library/windows/desktop/aa365247%28v=vs.85%29.aspx


> -Is there a way to work with FFS and webdav directly?


You'll need a tool that maps the webdav to appear like a regular Windows
folder. However webdav was really slow in my tests, too. I expect there is a
better protocol or mapping tool, but I haven't put much time into
investigation.

[aznarepse]

Hi, many thanks for your post!
Indeed, I have tried another tool, Cloud Safe Webdav drive and it works but
the speed isn't spectacular either. Funny because if I use a webdav client to
transfer files directly, it does it much faster. The protocol is quite all
right for the purpose and resilent to the latency of the network...
I am actually thinking on coding some 'pushing' routine, to set up in each
computer, so that they just 'push' any new file to the other computers' webdav
folder.