How can I either send big files, about 25GB in all, to my girlfriend in Germany, or allow her access to my computer so she can download them.

I can set up my computer with apache2, but since the isp did something to automate internet access, my wired connection has ip 192.168.1.3

I'm pretty sure if she enters that in Germany, she will not get my computer!

I do not own a webpage, or I would just upload them to the server.

She uses Win, and is even less expert at computers than I am, so it needs to be something simple.

If I put them in the Public folder on my computer, how can she access them?? (I'm using Ubuntu 12.04)

You can try Box (this is what you can use with Thunderbird for attaching files up to 25GB (what a coincidence ). It doesn't cost anything and it works quite well. Here's the link:
www.box.com
It also works for boyfriends living in France.
jdk

Thanks for that, but the max file size is 1GB by box.com, which won't hack it!

"A nation is a group of persons united by the common error of their ancestry and a common dislike of their neighbors." -Karl W. Deutsch

A nation has a language, and a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. (Dunno who said that.)

It was Max Weinreich. I studied under his son Uriel back in the day.
Re: box.com maybe the 25GB was the total you could store there. I'm sure there are places you could try. Thunderbird gives you a few options and I picked the first one.
jdk

Why not setup a private ftp server:
http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/w...P_Server_Setup

Thanks TexMex, I'll look into that!! I actually tried the post office here in Nanjing. The woman opened the envelope and took a look at the CDs and said, "You can't send those, they are fake copies!" You can buy any Windows, Win Office and stuff on the street here for 5 RMB, or about 80 US cents. The girlfriend wants the Chinese version, because it is very difficult to make sense of the internet when it is not in your language, so I thought just send the CDs. Apparently, it is ok to sell them, but not to send them!

@jdkaye: did you, by any remote chance know Prof. Herman Fränkel of Santa Cruz? It's just I find his book 'Grammatik und Sprachwirklichkeit' amazing!!

or you can use a torrent

Nope, very different fields. I am (or was, retired now but still active) in theoretical linguistics. He seems to have been in classical studies. So quite different from what I do.
ciao,
jdk

I would just burn the data to DVDs, and then mail the DVDs myself, unless there is more urgency to get the data transferred. However, in a follow up post, you mentioned that this is not legal for you. So I would stop what you're trying to do right there.

[edit]The following are generic comments, now that I have read your follow up post talking about the illegality of mailing these things. I had already typed the comments in prior to rereading the thread and seeing your subsequent mention of this being illegal. My comments are generic anyway, not telling you how to do the transfer, only telling you how to obtain your WAN IP address.[/edit]

With a good internet connection, she would be able to download 25Gb in a semi-timely manner (several hours probably) without too much problem, but what would it take for you to UPLOAD that amount of data from your computer? I don't know what kind of internet connection you have, but if it's like mine, my download speeds are about 25Mbps but my upload speeds are only about 4Mbps. Yours may be way higher and/or more symmetric though.

That is your LAN address, not your WAN address.

Yep, she might get a computer on her own LAN, if one exists with that IP address however.

If you can't get into your router (the one your ISP probably supplied that is giving you your 192.168.1.3 address), you can track down your WAN IP address by sending yourself an email and then looking at the headers in the email. Below is one I just sent to myself to illustrate. It shows that my LAN address is 192.168.0.6 and my WAN address is 123.456.789.0 (obviously I dummied up that WAN address, but this is just an illustration of the technique). This technique works well if you have someone in a remote location and you want to know their WAN IP address. Just have them send you an email, and then inspect the headers. Note: Usually everyone on the LAN will have the same WAN address, at least in a small home network. That's where you get into "port forwarding" on the router to select the correct LAN computer for a given WAN address.

I would definitely hit the "pause" button here and consider seriously whether you might just wind up getting both yourself and your (former?) girlfriend in hot water.

You should always treat copyright issues very seriously ... because, no matter what you do in this business, "a copyright, somewhere" is a major reason why you are able to get paid. Don't assume that someone out there won't be aware of that big fat file-transfer or able to deduce what it contains. If the postal clerk opened your package and told you that (s)he thought it was illegal to send them, the two of you should check very carefully to determine what is legal and above-reproach, both in China and in Germany.

Ok, we will just have to buy Windows. It costs 80 Euros, and she is just a poor student. Seems very expensive to me. I will have to show her how to use Linux!!

@haertig: I can't see how to find the details of an email. Where do I find them?? What do I click say in gmail??

I got around that: I have Astrill vpn installed, being in China. They have a service 'what's my ip'

I can access my router. Can I see my ip in there too??

I don't know how to view the raw email text directly (specifically, the headers I mentioned) using gmail. I've never used gmail. My example was from my "Thunderbird" email client. It has a "View->MessageSource" option to display this info.

You will have to login to your your router and search out where in the user interface to find your IP address. Where exactly you find the information will depend on your specific router. My router has a main "Overview" page that lists the "WAN IP Address", but each router is different. Since you mentioned VPN, that is different still. You have yet another IP address associated with VPN. So you have a WAN IP address, a LAN address, and a VPN address. Only the WAN address will be addressable from the internet-at-large. I am not familiar with internet service providers providing VPN. In my case, my ISP provides my WAN address, my router handles the LAN address(es), and my employer provides the VPN address. The WAN address is actually assigned to your router, not to any of your individual computers. The individual computers all funnel through that single WAN address via the router, which ascts as your "gateway" to the internet-at-large.

I was going to suggest that! I personally see no point in buying Windows. Maybe if you're a heavy-duty gamer who wants the latest and greatest games. But for normal stuff that a student should be doing (studying!), Linux works just fine I would think. Works fine for me in all my day-to-day stuff. However, I suppose some colleges could distribute Windows-only programs and such that might make Linux not so easy if you're someone not well versed in Linux to begin with.

Thanks for that, I'll check Thunderbird, I have it installed!

I really don't like Windows, I find it hard to use, especially in Chinese, and it is very intrusive here, you don't have control of your computer at all! I only keep windows on this machine because I need it to access my internet bank! How safe is that?? For some reason the Chinese internet bank, my bank is ICBC, only works with Windows! The girlfriend doesn't play games much. I hear the Chinese Govt wants to start using Linux more, the have released a thing called Kylin, which is Ubuntu really, specially tailored for Chinese users.