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BitTorrent Performance Test: Sync Is Faster Than Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox
An anonymous reader writes Now that its file synchronization tool has received a few updates, BitTorrent is going on the offensive against cloud-based storage services by showing off just how fast BitTorrent Sync can be. More specifically, the company conducted a test that shows Sync destroys Google Drive, Microsoft's OneDrive, and Dropbox. The company transferred a 1.36 GB MP4 video clip between two Apple MacBook Pros using two Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapters, the Time.gov site as a real-time clock, and the Internet connection at its headquarters (1 Gbps up/down). The timer started when the file transfer was initiated and then stopped once the file was fully synced and downloaded onto the receiving machine. Sync performed 8x faster than Google Drive, 11x faster than OneDrive, and 16x faster than Dropbox.
In my mind speed and saturation of bandwidth is NOT what I want on a folder syncing service. Sync it up in the background for me.
There's no real point in using it if you can't even trust it does what they say it does...
They compared the transfers between two laptops on the same LAN using a direct P2P client (BitTorrent Sync) and several Internet-reliant sync options, finding the direct file copy was faster. No, duh.
In other news, you spend less time on an airplane when you take a staycation.
If the OwnCloud server is on the same LAN as the laptops, I bet it is the same speed or faster than Sync.
If off-site from the server, I doubt the OwnCloud clients are smart enough to know a friendly computer is on the same LAN to share already downloaded chunks.
Which I might add is the only advantage to Bittorrent Sync. The technology only provides an increase in speed if one of the clients on the LAN has pieces of data already downloaded so the Internet connection is not as necessary. If neither computer has any of the data and both start downloading the same file, there is no advantage at all since the bandwidth shared between the two of them is the same finite amount.
These programs are designed not to saturate the upload/download pipes ruining the connection for all the users. So congrats, your protocol has all the problems of BitTorrent.
Ruining the connections since 2001.
is https://ind.ie/pulse/ (was SyncThing).
It was called X-windows in the 1980s,
That's X Window System to you, bub. That lawn you're on? It's mine. Off.
They copied some data across a local network. Then they compared it how long it took to transfer the same data to remote servers across their internet connection? 1.36 GB in 41 seconds is 33 MB/s, which is either extremely underwhelming for local network performance (I suspect a magnetic hard drive bottleneck), or extremely impressive for a fat internet pipe, neither having to do with the software in question.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
Touche'. Still, I'm amazed that there's a company called logmein that provides remote desktop service on the internet, and that (get this) it works by taking over the host computer's mouse and display! On X-windows (yes, I know) the computer you're logging into (the client) isn't affected visually; the displayed windows all exist as separate entities on the computer requesting the connection (ie the "display server"). Surely that makes a heck of a lot more sense.
I've been using BitTorrent Sync for a year or so now. The main feature that was missing for me was the ability to set up an untrusted node which does not get access to the unencrypted data but can serve as a fast 24/7 proxy and backup system.
This functionality has now been added, although it's still in beta and only officially available in the API, not in the client... but a very simple hack makes it available in the client. This opens BitTorrent Sync open to 3rd party sync providers or cheap VPS.
The interface is still a bit quirky and designed for techies, but has also improved over time. Overall very happy with BitTorrent Sync.
OwnCloud is a WebDAV based system. It's inherently bloated, but it works. Setting it up your own web server is a requirement (or purchasing web hosting somewhere, but then the trust/security goes out the window).
Google Drive, Dropbox, Onedrive, OwnCloud all require storing your data elsewhere.
BT Sync only syncs data across your devices. It does it really well, utilizing Bittorrent protocols and DHT. It's actually a very useful tool. I use it all the time.
I have been using bittorrent sync for about the same amount of time, and the thing that is killing me is that it makes no effort to detect and warn when a file has been modified on multiple computer since the last sync. It just chooses the one that was modified most recently, and silently overwrites the other one. It does create a temporary archive backup of the modified file that was overwritten, but by the time you noticed you have lost data, it can be very difficult to wade through all the archive files on different computers and figure out which ones need to be merged. The resolution to conflicts will always have to be a manual process, but the sooner you know that a conflict occured the easier it is to resolve.
I've lost track of how many password resets I have had to do because I lost a newly randomly generated password saved to my keypass database, synced across computers.