Syncing Laptop and Desktop files over college wifi?

Question

Are there any tools that can efficiently do so while not compromising the security of my files?

Will using such a tool place a burden on the college's WiFi network and slow down the network speed or hog bandwidth that others also utilize?

If this network syncing of files does place unncessary and/or noticeable burden on the college's network, what of the possibility of instantly syncing files when I connect the two computers with USB?

Ideally, the methods should be automatic after a one-time initial configuration so as to require low if any maintenance on my part.

Answer 1

Any of the file syncing technologies you use (Dropbox, Ubuntu One, Copy, btsync, etc.) will almost always need an initial sync if you already have data out there. This totally depends on the kind of documents you have.

What I do when I get a new laptop and install Dropbox is plug it into an ethernet cable and let it sync (I have about 65GB to sync.) so I don't saturate my wireless connection.

After that it really depends on the kind of files you place on your laptop while roaming. If you're just adding documents, PDFs, and so on then it'll just work transparently. If however you drop a 5 gig file on your laptop while you're in class or something then that will likely take a while.

I wouldn't worry too much about saturating your college's network, most of them are run by competent administrators that will limit per-client throughput anyway, but for the sake of convenience when transferring large amount of files I tend to pause my syncing and do it later when I get onto a faster wired network.