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Distributed Internet Backup System

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the here-have-my-drive dept.

deadfx writes "Since disk drives are cheap, backup should be cheap too. Of course it does not help to mirror your data by adding more disks to your own computer because a fire, flood, power surge, etc. could still wipe out your local data center. Instead, you should give your files to peers (and in return store their files) so that if a catastrophe strikes your area, you can recover data from surviving peers. The Distributed Internet Backup System (DIBS) is designed to implement this vision."

6 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Problem = bandwidth. by caluml · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The main problem with this approach (and for that matter Freenet) is that it is slow for all but the smallest files.

    Bandwidth is still the most precious commodity in computing. Once we get fibre to every house, then distributed storage will make sense.

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    1. Re:Problem = bandwidth. by nano2nd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're right in that today's infrastructure isn't made for chuffing massive, hard-drive-sized hunks of data back and forth.

      But what about incremental backups?

      OK so you've got to get your base image uploaded -somehow- but after that, data changes very little on a daily basis and this level of data transfer to some secure backup repository won't be a problem at all with current bandwidth.

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    2. Re:Problem = bandwidth. by gmuslera · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For internal networks where you have a lot of fast connected servers, sparing a bit of bandwidth and disk space to have a distributed backup across the LAN could be useful, specially when you can backup servers data in workstations and so on.

  2. I can't see this being a go, any time soon. by saskboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As has been mentioned already, [no this is not redundant, because I am writing this myself] the potential for data being stolen is too great an issue to overlook. This is not a viable option because the potential for theft is too great, and no ammount of encryption will make a difference. Encryption will always be broken.

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  3. Don't trust them to return your files by PepperedApple · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not so much that I wouldn't trust someone not to break the encryption, but what if the person who's holding your backup copies gets tired of giving up disk storage and just deletes the software from his/her computer. Or what if their computer happens to be off when you want to retrieve the backup?

  4. This idea is not new by fudgefactor7 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's been discussed (and even tried) before, the problems were many, namely security speed, and availability. One cannot guarantee any of those three every important variables. As a result it (the idea) died a horrible death--let's hope it dies again.