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BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

forbes.com

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Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#41

Post by sp332 »

stephengillie wrote: post #17
opinali wrote: post #6

Hilarious article. "there is no need to route through the cloud which can slow things down " wtf, no editorial oversight of tech material at Forbes? The rest is shit too.

When you put a file into a Dropbox-synced folder/directory, Dropbox first syncs the file to their cloud storage in AWS. Once that sync is completed , Dropbox starts to sync to other devices. If you want to sync a large file, you must wait for the cloud sync to complete before it will start to copy it to other devices, which could take longer than copying with a flash drive. I assumed that was the meaning behind the s…

That's true, but there is a special case if both computers are on the same LAN, the Dropbox client software will sync locally which is much faster.

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#42

Post by pdx »

hemancuso wrote: post #35
EricDeb wrote: post #21

One thing I've wanted to do is access files remotely without downloading them (streaming/virtual drives, etc). Do any of these services allow that (BTsync, dropbox, aeroFS), or am I forced to download files before accessing them?

You can mount dropbox and a whole bunch of other cloud services as a filesystem using ExpanDrive - google drive and box support coming next www.expandrive.com (I am the author)

I use a competitor of yours called WebDrive.

Can you discuss how you may be better then they are? I am actually a bit unhappy with them, as I occasionally have strange behavior where a file refuses to upload, or the cache sometimes quits updating. However, my version is a few years old, so perhaps they fixed these issues. I have thought of buying their new version, but I am open to hearing why I should switch.

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#43

Post by wiml »

KaiserPro wrote: post #25
keiferski wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. A service with the word "torrent" in it will never be adopted by a corporate entity. (edit: "typical" corporation. Technology companies don't count) 2. You may be overestimating how much the average person cares about file storage size, 3rd party servers, or transferring large files.

If I was aspera or filesociety, I'd be rather worried. I'm planning on using this to sync terrorbytes between london and LA. Why should I pay the ridiculous cost of a thinly wrapped rsync over UDP when I can have it for free? (the latency between the two means that the maximum throughput on tcp based protocols get about 2-3 megs a second tops) I will be testing the throughput of torrentsync. Currently it appears to b…

Is this just a delay-bandwidth-product problem? Are you not using tcp window scaling for some reason?

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#44

Post by EricDeb »

hemancuso wrote: post #35
EricDeb wrote: post #21

One thing I've wanted to do is access files remotely without downloading them (streaming/virtual drives, etc). Do any of these services allow that (BTsync, dropbox, aeroFS), or am I forced to download files before accessing them?

You can mount dropbox and a whole bunch of other cloud services as a filesystem using ExpanDrive - google drive and box support coming next www.expandrive.com (I am the author)

that's awesome! That's exactly the service I was looking at. Thanks for creating it!

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#45

Post by SirDinosaur »

acabal wrote: post #33

I looked at BTSync the other day when researching self-hosted Dropbox alternatives. It looks like a great product and so far beats the pants off the closest competitor, Seafile, for ease of install and use. I was really impressed. But unfortunately it's not open source, so it comes down to an issue of trust--which, in the end, is the same issue with Dropbox and really the entire point of moving to self-hosted for me.…

have you seen http://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/?

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#46

Post by pandeiro »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #36

It has a massive problem which Dropbox solves: the need for both computers to be on at the same time. I have a laptop. I have a desktop. They are almost never on at the same time. With Dropbox this is _fine_ - the files go from one to the cloud, and then to the other when it's turned on. With BTSync, this would mean that my files would never sync.

Exactly, this is the big issue that is never mentioned in the Forbes article nor the BT Sync docs. Maybe it's obvious in hindsight, but since they're comparing it to Dropbox and all...

However with the daemon running on a Linode instance or something like that, I suppose that's no longer a problem.

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#47

Post by dbarlett »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #32

So I understand that data transfer is not done via online services, but can BitTorrent Sync be used entirely locally? For example, I have a desktop at home, one at work, and my laptop. I would love to have my music collection available all the time on my work desktop, but I don't want to waste the bandwidth at the office. My ideal use case would be that while I am at home, my laptop and home desktop sync across the L…

Yes, if you disable the use of relay and tracker servers. See page 8 of http://btsync.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/BitTorrentS...

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#48

Post by gooderlooking »

gcr wrote: post #38
Negitivefrags wrote: post #32

So I understand that data transfer is not done via online services, but can BitTorrent Sync be used entirely locally? For example, I have a desktop at home, one at work, and my laptop. I would love to have my music collection available all the time on my work desktop, but I don't want to waste the bandwidth at the office. My ideal use case would be that while I am at home, my laptop and home desktop sync across the L…

You want to control the topology of your own network? Not really. BitTorrent Sync allows for LAN syncing, yes. When a direct connection between hosts is not possible, it will use a third-party server as first a matchmaking server for NAT hole punching. If that fails, it will route all sync traffic through the third party server acting as a relay. (These third parties are controlled by the BitTorrent Sync developers)…

Looks like you can opt-out of the relay service. From the very bottom of the article:

Traffic Relay ... You can opt out of this, but it could result in peers not being able to network with each other.

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#49

Post by mwfunk »

KaiserPro wrote: post #25
keiferski wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. A service with the word "torrent" in it will never be adopted by a corporate entity. (edit: "typical" corporation. Technology companies don't count) 2. You may be overestimating how much the average person cares about file storage size, 3rd party servers, or transferring large files.

If I was aspera or filesociety, I'd be rather worried. I'm planning on using this to sync terrorbytes between london and LA. Why should I pay the ridiculous cost of a thinly wrapped rsync over UDP when I can have it for free? (the latency between the two means that the maximum throughput on tcp based protocols get about 2-3 megs a second tops) I will be testing the throughput of torrentsync. Currently it appears to b…

You must have a frightening amount of data!

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#50

Post by zzzmarcus »

ronnier wrote: post #5

I'd say it could be troubling for dropbox. It's probably game over for https://aerofs.com though unless AeroFS drastically changes/pivots. For dropbox, they do have some advantages. Bittorrent brings up thoughts of piracy. Dropbox doesn't have that reputation and would be much more acceptable in corporate environments. Additionally, Dropbox has integration with a lot of apps and I don't see that happening with BT Syn…

Why would this be game over for AeroFS? Yes, BT Sync is direct competition, but I've used AeroFS for over two years now, since their early alphas and AeroFS works almost flawlessly for P2P sync. It also has S3 sync for their team server which works very well. AeroFS is free for everything BT Sync does, it's only when you get into features that BT Sync doesn't handle at all that you would need to pay for AeroFS. I think AeroFS could work on their marketing and software UX, but so could BT Sync.
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