I am looking for an option to allow clients to upload images to me via my server. A typical situation would be the client has a directory of images they want to upload to me. 10, 100 or X number total in the directory.

I want to provide a way for the client to upload everything in the directory via their browser.

Will gzip help with the transmission? I have read it helping send out from the server, but nothing the other direction. Would make sense, but you know how logic goes....

Is it possible to create a script or whatever for an entire directory to be uploaded? I am not a web designer -- but I need to know as I get ready to contract such a thing out if it is even possible.

If gzip will help with the transmission, does it handle each file independently? Or does it zip everything into one massive file and then transmit it?

If using gzip, what kind of processor does the server need to have? My current plans (without gzip being used) has a P4 being more than sufficient. I don't have numbers on how many will be uploading similtaniously. But how does 300GB of data being uploaded work as a number? Would like to see it much higher -- but that will work as a planning number.

Thank you.
David

(PS I already have the bandwidth issues handled on my end. Trying to reduce the time problem on the client end. Burning DVDs is not an option.)

Bump. Anyone? Anyone?

You probably could have continued your last thread, rather than creating a new one.

gzip would improve uploads, too, but there's no client-side compression in any browser I've seen. Uploading just isn't done that much. gzip does not handle multiple files in any way. It's often paired with tar (hence .tar.gz extensions) for that.

You can not automatically add all files in a directory (security thing), so they would need to pack them up and upload the pack.

gzip is a fairly light compression, so it won't change your hardware requirements much. 300GB is a fine number, but throughput is a function of time. Is it 300GB/sec? Won't happen. 300GB/day? Could be very messy. 300GB/month? Pretty easy on modern hardware.