What's the best way to enjoy my home music library from work?

[Alex Franke]

I have about a zillion nicely organized tracks (MP3 & WMA) on my computer at home, and I want to be able to browse and listen to them from here at work. Both are Windows machines.

I was thinking maybe the best thing to do would be to share the music library over secured FTP, but I wonder if you all know of a cleaner way to do this... I don't want to use remote desktop because my wife can't use the computer while I'm remoting in.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[bmyers]

Have you looked at Orb?

http://orb.com/


Bill

[cgallery]

The Orb thing looks pretty kewl.

I have a slimp3 player (www.slimp3.com). While I've never done this, you could configure a router to open the server ports to the outside world, and then have a remote (at work, for example) slimp3 player that connects to your home music library.

I probably will do this eventually, with my only concern being some sort of security that prevents other people from listening to my music (and burning my bandwidth). I haven't dug into it enough to determine whether they provide some sort of security option (probably do).

[tedkitch]

Due to the fact that I once lost the hard drive that all of my tunes were on, I went with a portable hard drive to store my tunes on. However, I got to the point that I wanted to listen to it in the car and at other places so I purchased an iPod and synced all of the music to that, created playlists and I use a docking station to connect to my stereo at work (this could also be hooked up to your sound card if your computer is your stereo). This gives me a usable backup of the files that I have ripped from my CD's and purchased online.

I know people that use Orb and they like it very much.

One thing to consider is how much bandwidth you will take up for the quality of music that you will want to hear. The lower quality will use less bandwidth, but won't sound as good. I just bring this up as some IT guys will have a fit if anything over x is streaming and using up their bandwidth.

[JSUPreston]

Speaking from the other point of view...as a network administrator, I frown upon almost all streming media coming into my network. There are days where I can't get any work done because of the bandwidth being used with people listening to music and watching videos. Plus, it could be viewed as a security hole (it would be by me).

I'm hoping to convince my boss into letting me get a web filtering device for the office. I bet that would cut internet use in half.

In your case, I'd suggest either an iPod or one of the Zens from Creative.

[bmyers]

Speaking from the other point of view...as a network administrator, I frown upon almost all streming media coming into my network. There are days where I can't get any work done because of the bandwidth being used with people listening to music and watching videos. Plus, it could be viewed as a security hole (it would be by me).

I'm hoping to convince my boss into letting me get a web filtering device for the office. I bet that would cut internet use in half.

In your case, I'd suggest either an iPod or one of the Zens from Creative.

Users only do what you let them do... But her question wasn't about bandwidth or security. As a network admin, I shutdown this sort of stuff and don't frown at all... Frowning doesn't work as good a TCP blocking...

Bill

[Raffi]

iPod seems like the simplest way to accomplish this, plus it is a backup of your library.

Raffi

[maxparot]

Burn your collection to dual layer dvd. I'd be willing to bet you would only have a few disc to cover your collection and you could take them anywhere you had a DVD player or computer with DVD ROM

[JSUPreston]

Users only do what you let them do... But her question wasn't about bandwidth or security. As a network admin, I shutdown this sort of stuff and don't frown at all... Frowning doesn't work as good a TCP blocking...

Bill

Bill, what tools do you use? I've been looking at setting up a squid proxy, but haven't quite figured out the config file yet. What I've been doing at the moment has been setting up false DNS records in our internal DNS. Not perfect, but it's working for right now, especially since most of my users don't know the difference between a mouse and a printer.

[Russianwolf]

Burn your collection to dual layer dvd. I'd be willing to bet you would only have a few disc to cover your collection and you could take them anywhere you had a DVD player or computer with DVD ROM

or copy the library onto some thumb drives. then you can use them on just about any computer (since all computers made in the last what 10 years have a USB port) I know they have drives up to 8 gig available.

[LinuxRandal]

Speaking from the other point of view...as a network administrator, I frown upon almost all streming media coming into my network. There are days where I can't get any work done because of the bandwidth being used with people listening to music and watching videos. Plus, it could be viewed as a security hole (it would be by me).

I'm hoping to convince my boss into letting me get a web filtering device for the office. I bet that would cut internet use in half.

In your case, I'd suggest either an iPod or one of the Zens from Creative.

While your getting permission for the proxy server, what do you use to block adult entertainment now? Could you just add things like YouTube and Google video, etc...., to your Hosts file, then copy it to the machines on your network?

[bmyers]

Bill, what tools do you use? I've been looking at setting up a squid proxy, but haven't quite figured out the config file yet. What I've been doing at the moment has been setting up false DNS records in our internal DNS. Not perfect, but it's working for right now, especially since most of my users don't know the difference between a mouse and a printer.

Getting off topic but...

Squid and some outbound firewall rules should do the trick for you. You could also route undesirable traffic sources through an ACL that wouldn't allow access to normal users subnets. You'd want to keep it for yourself of course for "testing"..

Bill

(sorry for talking shop in a woodworking forum)

[Alex Franke]

Have you looked at Orb? http://orb.com/

Very cool -- it looks like this might be a match!

One thing to consider is how much bandwidth you will take up for the quality of music that you will want to hear. . . .as some IT guys will have a fit if anything over x is streaming and using up their bandwidth.

...as a network administrator, I frown upon almost all streming media coming into my network. There are days where I can't get any work done because of the bandwidth being used with people listening to music and watching videos.

I don't think we have any bandwidth concerns at the moment (I often don't even notice a 5MB file d/l -- can be alarmingly fast especially with other universities). We're usually limited by the speed at which the other computers can serve up the files. That might end up being the problem, though. I'd hate for my VoIP quality at home to tank just because I'm pulling down a file.

The DVD and thumb drive ideas make a lot of sense, too. I want to avoid buying new hardware, though, or changing out media. Call me cheap and lazy -- go ahead.

Thanks for all the great input! I'll have to try out Orb and see how it goes...

[BigguyZ]

I've burned CDs directly to my work PC's HDD. Or you can use a jump drive or external HDD too. A 1GB thumb drive can be less than $10, and the utility of these guys is pretty high if you ask me.