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BitTorrent Launches Dropbox Alternative
redletterdave writes "On Friday morning, BitTorrent launched the alpha test of a new, free public service called BitTorrent Sync, which allows users to securely back up and sync files over the Web using BitTorrent's platform. Unlike competing services such as Box or Dropbox, BitTorrent Sync doesn't store files on remote servers (which means that no third party has access to one's files), and also has no storage limits other than what your devices can hold."
I can't find any seeders for my chemistry homework!
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
This doesn't sound like a distributed de-dupe (ie shards/map/anyone can send you a bit that you own/you assemble on the client). So how does it work, that makes BitTorrent naturally better?
Any ideas?
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
I for one, welcome our new torrent overlords!
Ok, so I admit I glanced at the article, but I don't understand how
makes sense. Where is the data going? Can anyone please read this more carefully and explain what the hell is going on?
Seems like this would require a lot of space. Also wonder what happens to data that's abandoned by the owner. I definitely like the idea of not having to rely on Google/Dropbox though.
Maybe I'm just not understanding it all, but
1) What's stopping you from being unable to access files due to seeders being offline? With Dropbox I can just get the file from their site and I'm done, but it seems like with this setup I'm counting on random people having my file + being online.
2) How is a third party access to files worse than numerous people holding it? Dropbox doesn't give a damn what you have in there. I have a folder hundreds of megabytes in size filled with unsavory materials, that I would certainly be embarrassed if someone found out about them. But why is Dropbox, a service with millions of users around the world, going to pick MY box of all places to peek into? And if they do find it, what would they care? They don't know who I am, so they can't "oust" me, and even if I had personally identifiable information/financial data/etc. they wouldn't dare use it and risk being sued/shut down. Bittorrent Sync, on the other hand... each seeder must have at least many pieces of the file, along with some identifier telling who it belongs to. All they need to do is figure out the right decryption process, and bam, it's a nightmare for EVERYONE using the service. These people have little to lose by abusing your files, so it's clearly more dangerous using P2P for backup storage.
Strongly Encrypt your data in a container labled "lesbian porn". Now seed it. Backup complete.
It's syncing. Not cloud storage. if you have 5 computers with a file they would all send the file, split up just like bittorrent to one device if you choose. This could make file transfers much faster over a local network because you won't have the bottle neck of hd speed. over the internet will only be fast if you've got a good upload speed on your syncing devices. It will suck with my 1.5 upload but I might use it for local syncing.
I have very little value in accessing my data on a website, but it's very convenient for me to have a folder synced between two disparate computers. It's like copying data to a flash drive to take it home from work except that you don't have to worry about accidentally putting the flash drive through the washing machine. It's just there by the time I get home.
As a Windows user, I had been using Windows Live Mesh to take care of this (as well as remote desktop). Microsoft is replacing Mesh with SkyDrive, though, which is limited by the amount of storage they give you. The replacement that I HAVE been using is Cubby, from LogMeIn. Visiting their website now, though, I find that what they are calling "DirectSync" is going to become a $7/mo paid feature. Seeing that, I am very excited about this development from the BitTorrent crew.
Wuala had a great P2P storage trading scheme, if you provided 100G to the swarm you got 100G of swarm storage. Then they stuffed it up by capping the storage to 2G unless you pay $n/GB
Wuala missed the greatest opportunity, they should have allowed people in the swarm to trade storage for money and wuala could have taken a cut, say 30% like Apple do. This way the market sets the price per GB, but wuala always gets its cut, if you wanna pay to stor your chemistry homework then fine.
Crappy links in the article. To sign up, er "apply", for the alpha:
http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html
You could possibly run http://owncloud.org/ yourself on an Amazon server and have as much storage as you want. There are clients for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android.
It took me 30 minutes to set one up. While I may sound like an advert, I am just really excited as I have been waiting for something like this for years.
I think European companies that need to keep data inside Europe for regulatory reasons can then run this for their employees inside their firewalls / VPNs.
Slashdot Beta should die a painful death.
I'm reminded of the old joke that if you want you photos/videos/etc backed up in a way that will outlast traditional back up media lifespans, simply upload it to a torrent and let it stay on the Internet being seeded by strangers sharing your stuff.
If you've ever used P2P services for, well... anything, you know they are slow and unreliable. Whether it's DNS, VPN, file transfers, or a form of currency. Yet they keep coming out with new useless ways to implement this technology into a service no one will use. I don't get it.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Perhaps you have your own tracker through this. Your files don't necessarily need to be sync'd with all devices, but each device have different files tracked. This service may gave us our own 'Tracker' that would index our 'cloud' files that you pick which you want downloaded, of course, going through BitTorrent's service. So it would be true, the max file size/capacity would be the combined capacity of your devices. As long as your device is on and connected to the internet, you could retrieve that file, and the track would advise you if the file is available or not
So, you store your files on your own computers, but it makes them available from an online source? I don't see how this is better than the myriad of free services out there. If I'm talking about large quantities of data, there are better ways to do it. Small data = free with current BETTER methods. Waste of time.
If I understand this correctly, this new bittorrent product will NOT back up your files. It is for file synchronization only.
In other words, if you have 5 devices synced up, and you corrupt or delete an important file from one of the devices, that file is toast. It is not backed up to any remote location.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
did you miss the part about not storing on 3rd party servers and having no storage limits?
This is basically an "open source" version of what http://www.cubby.com did in their free beta--but is now a paid part of the service. It was called "DirectSync" ( https://www.cubby.com/features/ ) and didn't use any of the "cloud" part of storage from the service. You can see how it is now part of the paid service here: https://www.cubby.com/pricing/
I would expect any number of other providers are looking at this for a paid service. High end versions would include Globalscape's WAFS ( http://www.globalscape.com/wafs/ ) and File Replication Pro ( http://www.filereplicationpro.com/ ).
Free with good encryption is a great idea IMO. I for one would use it.
This is basically an "open source" version of what http://www.cubby.com/ did in their free beta--but is now a paid part of the service. It was called "DirectSync" ( https://www.cubby.com/features/ ) and didn't use any of the "cloud" part of storage from the service. You can see how it is now part of the paid service here: https://www.cubby.com/pricing/
I would expect any number of other providers are looking at this for a paid service. High end versions would include Globalscape's WAFS ( http://www.globalscape.com/wafs/ ) and File Replication Pro ( http://www.filereplicationpro.com/ ).
Free with good encryption is a great idea IMO. I for one would use it.
...by storing them on my own storage? Brilliant!!!!!
https://github.com/lg/murder I hope so.
Because you can - or because you should?
Too bad the "how to" in not enough to get it to work.
Just on 3rd party workstations, instead. Surely that is better than third party servers.
sarcasm aside, yes. it is.
the former is indistinguishable from noise, the latter is vulnerable.
How's this different from Symform?
I was hoping to use exactly something like this years ago, when I had to transfer tens of GB to and from Korea every day when I was working at Hammerhead Productions. Using rsync was painfully slow, because TCP/IP required acknowledgement of each packet -- and even though our bandwidth was high, our latency was very long, and we were getting less than 1 Mbps rather than the 10 Mbps we should have been getting.
Using something like BitTorrent, which uses UDP and does the error checking itself asynchronously would have been a huge help. We had multiple cable modems on both ends, and BitTorrent would have been perfect.
In the end, I wrote a simple tool which copied files using scp, but ran 10 threads with 10 separate scp calls and got almost 10 Mbps from each cable modem.
Aspera does similar things at insane prices.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
n/t
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.