anonymous "on demand" file transfers?

[Jens Stimpfle]

On Fri, Mar 09, 2012 at 04:51:08PM -0500, Filipe Fernandes wrote:
> Is it possible to serve up files anonymously via a folder of my choosing
> on demand?
> 
> [..]
>
> What I'm looking for though is something more efficent without creating
> extrenuous files like 'index.html' (when using wget -r) or the like.

That's no rsync solution, but I usually do it about this way:

On the serving side:
$ tar cv FILES | nc -q0 -l -p 9999

On the "client" side:
$ nc server 9999 | tar xv

The server side needs -q0 to netcat so the connection closes when
everything from stdin (tar cv) has been through.