CrushFTP 3 lets you serve files from your computer, or any other computer on the Internet that's running an FTP server. It does this by treating your local machine as if its the same as any other machine. You drag and drop directories into CrushFTP 3's file system, and you also add servers into the file system. They look just like a directory, but CrushFTP will connect and return directory listings to a user when they are browsing them. It will also translate listings from non standard formats.

When a user requests a file, CrushFTP tells the remote server to start sending the file to the user. The user never really knows the file didn't come from you. Of course they could check to see where the connection came from, but CrushFTP also allows you to tunnel the data through itself. While this doesn't distribute the load on the server, it does give a little more security. CrushFTP will also tunnel the data when its not possible to tell the server to transfer the data directly.

This type of serving can be used to create redundant servers. One main CrushFTP server that transfers each incoming connection to a server in its list. If for some reason that connection times out, it quickly goes on to the next server in the list and so on. So if a server did happen to go down, or a config was changed on that server, CrushFTP transparently starts serving form the next in the list. The timeout value for the server can even be specified. This can also be used to create load balancing servers.

The first connection goes to the first server in the list, and the next connection to the next. When its gets to the end, it wraps around to the beginning. As long as the data isn't being tunneled through CrushFTP, then the load is distributed. Its important to note that this isn't something that can only be done for just one directory, but can be done for multiple directories in one users virtual file system.

A good use for something like this would be somebody running a mirror site. They could distribute the load coming in on their server over to other servers as well.

CrushFTP also allows for switching servers once the Main server is reaching its max allowed bandwidth. So you can just have backup servers to take over the load when your main one starts to fill up.