The iTwin is too small and pretty to put in a blender, but let's try a few things to see how well it works.

Home And Work Tests

I put one end in my home media center computer. That compouter is always on, and a very limited user is logged in to run Windows Media Center. Running the iTwin software with it I selected a few folders like Recorded TV. I have a home-type router with no "DMZ" defined and the usual firewall settings; that is connected to a cable modem and I generally do not know my IP address. I have not set up anything to access any home computer from the outside. The next day at work, I plugged in the other iTwin end and let it install the software. In a few seconds (no logoff/on or reboot needed) it opened a Remote Files window and there were the folders I had shared on the media center computer. One second later iTwin reported that the connection was lost, but on selecting "Remote Files" from the notification tray icon menu, the remote file were shown and the connection kept working. On subsequent days I made multiple connections to the home computer with no problems.

I opened some text files and some PDF's with no problem. A 3.8GB TV recording, however, resulted in a copying dialog box that said "7 hours remaining". Well, not too surprising. My home upload speed is a typically slow 3.25Mbs. So I'm not going to be watching recorded TV shows at work, but it was useful for deleting various recorded shows remotely.

For the other way around, I connected to a file share on an office computer from home over a VPN connection. Here are some times of copying a group of small files and one larger file that way and via iTwin:

• 25 small files: Windows = 14 seconds; iTwin = 5 seconds
• one 105MB file: Windows = 70 seconds; iTwin = 129 seconds

It is not too surprising that iTwin is better than Windows at copying a bunch of small files; the SMB (System Message Block, the network protocol Windows uses to copy files to and from a file share) has a lot of overhead when opening files. Conversely Windows did better copying one medium sized file where, presumably, the overhead of opening it is diminished, and the overhead of iTwin encrypting and decrypting a large amount of data impacts the speed.

It should be noted that, for me, mapping the remote share over the VPN connection (and making the VPN connection itself) is tedious and quite slow. Avoiding that alone may make iTwin your choice, even if actually copying speed is a bit slower.

During the copying, the iTwin software popped up a couple notification balloons, first saying the speed was MEDIUM, then saying it was HIGH. That's a nice feature to let you know what is going on during a long copy. Presumably if my Internet connection degraded, it would have told me.

Local Network Tests

Even though our home computers can usually connect to each other, I did most of the iTwin testing there. When first plugged in, it shows a notification balloon saying "Showing Remote Files using Intranet Connection" since both computers are on the same network and file copies go directly between the two systems. When the two computers are on different networks, the data is transferred through iTwin's servers. I wonder how many home users will know what an "Intranet Connection" is.

When plugging in the iTwin, it takes as much 25 or 30 seconds for it to get everything set up and show the remote files, but you don't have to do anything but wait. I think that is from my busy Internet provider; initialization from the office computers and on some other days was faster.

I copied several different files from the remote computer to the local computer with iTwin and with a shared Windows folder and both computers on 1Gb Ethernet connections to compare the speeds. Here are some timings:

• 19 small files: Windows =1 second; iTwin = 6 seconds
• one 585MB file: Windows = 10 seconds; iTwin = 50 seconds
• one 1327MB file: Windows =20 seconds; iTwin = 94 seconds

So on my home network, it appears to be about 5 times slower than SMB. There is encryption going on, and the local CPU (one core at least) was pegged. I also noticed iTwin's copy dialog box did a poor job of estimating the time remaining, grossly overestimating. Good thing, it was pretty slow anyway, and the estimates made it look a lot slower.

Here is an interesting aside: I have a small but sometimes flakey secondary gig-E switch in the upstairs office that has been OK lately but, in the above tests, the Windows file copy would sometimes completely stop for a long time. I'm thinking dropped packets. The iTwin copies didn't have this problem over the same connection. The switch was removed for the timings, but this indicates to me that the simpler network traffic generated by the iTwin may be less prone to network problems than SMB.

Help and Support

The software has no local help file or any kind of diagnostics, status indicators, or logs, so problem reporting and determination is difficult. I did send email to the help desk with my stupid problem of no remote files being displayed because I hadn't selected any. That was on a Friday at 9am, and I got a friendly reply ("let's be sure you have selected ...") at 2am Saturday, so that's pretty good. Their FAQ page is pretty good, but the User Manual is the same little brochure than comes with it, and doesn't have much.

Wish List

This version 1 of the iTwin software is quite usable, but several missing features come to mind quickly, for example:

1. A properties menu item for the remote and local file context menus, so you can see how big the file is or what other attributes it has, would be useful.
2. Some kind of identification of the remote computer and the full (local) path of the shared files would be helpful when you are moving the iTwin ends between a lot of computers.
3. The Local Files window should be called Shared Files.
4. Some diagnostics, local log files, and connection statistics would be nice for trouble shooting and just knowing what has been going on.
5. The software will keep a computer from going to sleep (standby) so a connection can be made; this is quite necessary, but I would like an option to turn it off. We have a different way to wake up our office computers if we need access, and I hate to leave one running all weekend when I don't really need access, or only need it on for a few minutes.
6. An option to run iTwin software as a service, with the service running as a specified user account so file permissions are enforced, could be useful in some cases, such as when the remote computer is unexpectedly restarted, and the foreground user is logged off.
7. The ability to share a whole drive letter and share folders from different drives that are the same name, would be convenient in some cases.

But don't let these missing features deter you.

Conclusion

The iTwin is a very cool device, and is well worth considering if you have ever had difficulty accessing files on a remote computer. Even if you know all about VPN, file shares, Windows accounts and share and file permissions, and all those things work for you most of the time, this is easier. Users of services like Dropbox will find this is complementary. You do have to physically move the "ends" from computer to computer, and be sure the local files to be shared are selected, but that is easy to do.

Chris Sacksteder is a computer nut, living in Central Pennsylvania with his equally nutty family. He enjoys trying new technologies and developing software.

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