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BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

torrentfreak.com

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Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#91

Post by weej »

illicium wrote: post #79
weej wrote: post #40

This is great; however, folks can still securely store data on cloud services. They just need to take a Trust No one (TNO) approach and encrypt their data to disk. For example you can use TrueCrypt and create/mount a drive volume that is fully encrypted while synced across a file share storage/sync service like DropBox. The only downside is that you have to install the TrueCrypt application on your client device, whi…

Another downside of using Truecrypt is that when you make a change in your volume, the whole volume file gets reuploaded to your storage/sync service. A better solution is to use .sparsebundles (Mac only) or something like BoxCryptor/encfs that encrypts files in the volume individually

Good point, I only use TrueCrypt for sensitive documents (small in file size), and don't worry/notice the entire volume sync.

BoxCryptor does look like a great alternative; however, it's not open source and does come w/ a price (literally and figuratively - file names exposed if using free version or drop $50 USD).

Have you used BoxCryptor? Curious what your experience has been. I'll give it a try.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#92

Post by rdl »

namityadav wrote: post #5

We're looking at AeroFS and BitTorrent Sync for sharing sensitive files with our team members. We're leaning towards BS mainly because this feels completely P2P, whereas AeroFS may become useless if the company shuts down. Is that right? I'd love to hear from someone who has used both of these about stability, sync conflicts, CPU load etc. Also would love to hear about plans to open source BS.

I think either of them would rapidly become useless if the company shut down -- if it's not being kept updated, the clients will cease to work on newer OSes, etc. I wouldn't worry too much about the differences.

Maybe both BT and AeroFS should help customers mitigate that risk by committing to open source their code if they shut down. AeroFS has a revenue model, though, so I'd be less concerned about them shutting down this product.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#93

Post by evanw »

uses wrote: post #24

I've been using BitTorrent Sync for the past week. For the use case of sharing large files, it obliterates Dropbox, AeroFS, and Cubby. It distributes the files intelligently and makes optimal use of everyone's bandwidth. Dropbox, for example, slowly uploads all files to the cloud before distributing them, plus there's the space issue. AeroFS allows unlimited space, but is far slower than my Internet and LAN speeds al…

How does it handle scenarios where files were modified offline on two separate devices? Is it able to identify conflicts?

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#94

Post by weej »

eknkc wrote: post #89
illicium wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another downside of using Truecrypt is that when you make a change in your volume, the whole volume file gets reuploaded to your storage/sync service. A better solution is to use .sparsebundles (Mac only) or something like BoxCryptor/encfs that encrypts files in the volume individually

Is it? I believe dropbox handles files in up to 8MB chunks. If a chunk is not modified, it's not re-uploaded. I use encfs though, good suggestion.

Good call. I'm not sure of the Dropbox client, but API is variable all the way up to 150MB. Typical client is "4MB chunk"

https://www.dropbox.com/developers/core/api#chunked-upload

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#95

Post by mikemoka »

slg wrote: post #29
notdonspaulding wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a rendezvous server that also serves as a fallback relay in case two devices that want to sync are behind highly-unfriendly NATs. In that sense, it's exactly like Dropbox. But it doesn't store your data, so yes, one device must always be on in order to sync with a new device. However, if you have a device that needs changes made on another one, it will just wait around and sync whenever the device with change…

That might very well rule Sync out for personal use by the general public. The benefit of Dropbox (and similar server backed services) is that the most up-to-date version of a file is simply there as soon as you are connected to the Internet. Most people who have two computers won’t be using them both at the same time. For example, a common use case for these services is syncing files while you are traveling. Requiri…

This project is useless if they don't figure out a way to serve files without both machines being turned on, there is also the problem of syncing with multiple clients beside that.

I see two key use cases that could cause trouble:

1)a co-worker turned his computer off and went home from work, the syncing couldn't complete even if only a single doc was left

2)Because there is no central server if all of my coworkers in a distributed team sync with my new shared folder at the same time, it is required that I own a connection capable of supporting that kind of traffic, because it would be almost the same as streaming a video to multiple users, not to mention that I would probably have to avoid to browse the web for pretty much anything else in the meanwhile.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#96

Post by SoftwareMaven »

mseebach wrote: post #53
andrethegiant wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100Gb of Dropbox costs $10/month, BitTorrent Sync is free.

Dropbox has your stuff stored away in a fairly secure facility, while BitTorrent Sync just syncs between machines you've installed it on. That's worth something. Of course, you can just rent a cheap VPS somewhere and have it sync your BTS folders, but I think you'll be hard pressed to find a VPS with 100 GB storage for less than $10/month.

That's easily solved with Backblaze backing up one of the synced machines. Then it's $5/month for unlimited with off-site backup.

I agree with you that this is a very important consideration: Sync services (even Dropbox) are not backup services and shouldn't be treated like they are. You are in an even worse predicament if you are using it to sync everything locally.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#97

Post by jcastro »

buro9 wrote: post #9

Really nice, but the thing is... Dropbox has gone beyond just file sharing. One example: I used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. I moved from Flickr to Picasa as it could cope with the directories full of photos and I didn't have to manually upload them and Google's storage space was cheaper. Then I ran out of space... over 100GB of photos, where…

It's not just filesync, but layman's backup too.

It's nice to be able to rollback/undelete files. Plus everyone is forgetting that Dropbox snagged Audiogalaxy a while back, so I'm expecting to be able to stream music back to myself from my Dropbox at some point as a service.

I just moved a bunch of stuff to btsync to mess with it but I still need to find a place offsite to keep it in addition if I want it to replace Dropbox. I'll likely use both tools in combination.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#98

Post by k2enemy »

buro9 wrote: post #9

Really nice, but the thing is... Dropbox has gone beyond just file sharing. One example: I used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. I moved from Flickr to Picasa as it could cope with the directories full of photos and I didn't have to manually upload them and Google's storage space was cheaper. Then I ran out of space... over 100GB of photos, where…

> And consumers are not thinking in terms of encrypted sync, they're just thinking in terms of "I just want to do X, why is it so hard", and so I can't see this (very nice) solution really solving the problems that consumers have, that will make them prioritise security.

I have a use case that is pretty common among my peer group and BT Sync has been the best solution I've been able to find. In a nutshell, I need to sync large datasets across multiple computers.

Dropbox: expensive

AeroFS: buggy, used too much bandwidth, and slow

Sparkleshare: uses git which chokes on large files

Git Annex Assistant: didn't work reliably on mac

rsync/duplicity/unison: needs extra logic for detecting file changes

I also think the "Dropbox replacement" idea is a strawman created by the TorrentFreak article. I've never had the impression that BT Sync is trying to replace Dropbox. It is just trying to do p2p sync with a great interface and some nice features such as read-only and one-time secrets.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#99

Post by lelandbatey »

uses wrote: post #24

I've been using BitTorrent Sync for the past week. For the use case of sharing large files, it obliterates Dropbox, AeroFS, and Cubby. It distributes the files intelligently and makes optimal use of everyone's bandwidth. Dropbox, for example, slowly uploads all files to the cloud before distributing them, plus there's the space issue. AeroFS allows unlimited space, but is far slower than my Internet and LAN speeds al…

Well, that description totally sold me on BS. That's like everything I want.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#100

Post by [deleted] »

uses wrote: post #24

I've been using BitTorrent Sync for the past week. For the use case of sharing large files, it obliterates Dropbox, AeroFS, and Cubby. It distributes the files intelligently and makes optimal use of everyone's bandwidth. Dropbox, for example, slowly uploads all files to the cloud before distributing them, plus there's the space issue. AeroFS allows unlimited space, but is far slower than my Internet and LAN speeds al…

[deleted]
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