Slashdot Mirror
Dropbox Is Rolling Out a Private Network to Speed Up File Access (fortune.com)
Dropbox, the file storage company that last year moved 90 percent of its data out of Amazon Web Services cloud and into its own data centers, is at it again. From a report on Fortune: The San Francisco company is building its own international private network to make sure users abroad can access their files -- most of which reside in those aforementioned Dropbox U.S. data centers -- faster. "What people don't realize about the internet is that it is very 'bursty' and can hit bottlenecks," Akhil Gupta, vice president of engineering at Dropbox tells Fortune. That is why the company is ripping out third-party load balancers and replacing them with its own software running on standard Linux hardware. Insulating itself from the balky internet is also the reason Dropbox is contracting to use its own dedicated fiber cable to carry that traffic. "We want to make user experience as real time as possible since 70 percent of our users are outside the U.S. and most of the data lives in North America," says Dan Williams, Dropbox's head of production engineering. Dropbox still partners with Amazon for customers in some countries, like Germany, which require user data to stay in the country of origin.
It seems kind of amazing that so many people outside the U.S. use DropBox. I mean I really like it, but you'd think most companies would want to keep data outside the U.S. if possible (which as noted they do do for German clients).
I guess it's just that there's nothing that works nearly so well anywhere else, which I could see being compelling even if your data was more likely to be snooped on.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seems that, once you have the infrastructure and clients, you might as well try to compete with the big ISPs. Of course this would have huge net neutrality implications (clearly Dropbox would like to prioritize their service over everyone else).
If I was to rank the data sharing tools the various people I work with, it would be:
- Dropbox
- GDrive
- WeTransfer
For code:
- GitHub (80%+)
- Dropbox (Remainder)
It's a good tool, not particularly fast but reliable and easy for neos to use.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The question remains why are they not using a service closer to their country/continent?
I just didn't realize Dropbox had such an international reach, like I said I would have thought the majority of people would wan tot keep data locally and especially outside the U.S. where it's much easier to access to the government. But I guess people outside the U.S. car as little about that as the people inside...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I realise that it has to reconcile changes locally to remote changes but however they're doing it right now is totally fucked up. At the very least it shouldn't kill the performance of the rest of the system while it's working.
If you want to use that stuff, go right ahead, but my data stays where I can control it and no one else can access it without a court order.
Did I hear someone say "encryption" ?
Encyption is like a lock on the door of a house.
Sometimes it prevents access, but sometimes it doesn't.
Using additional strong encryption that you trust is one way you can control your data even when in the cloud.
I'm certain you have a lock on your door, but if you're still concerned about security, you probably have a security system to protect your possessions too.