Distributed Internet Backup System

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."

Comments

Problem = bandwidth.

[caluml]

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.

Re:Problem = bandwidth.

[nano2nd]

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.