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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

#61

Post by nl »

keiferski wrote: post #12
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…

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.

A service with the word "torrent" in it will never be adopted by a corporate entity

Absolutely not true. Eg: I know film theaters use private Bittorrent networks to distribute the multi-GB master copies of their films to cinemas (yes, they have hardware DRM etc where you need a unique code to be able to play, but they have no problem using the best tool for the job).

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

#62

Post by nl »

keiferski wrote: post #12
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…

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.

A service with the word "torrent" in it will never be adopted by a corporate entity

Absolutely not true. Eg: I know film theaters use private Bittorrent networks to distribute the multi-GB master copies of their films to cinemas (yes, they have hardware DRM etc where you need a unique code to be able to play, but they have no problem using the best tool for the job).

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

#64

Post by johne20 »

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.…

Did you ever evaluate http://owncloud.org/ ? I have never used it, but looked at briefly awhile back and it is open source.

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

#65

Post by conroe64 »

mindstab wrote: post #9

I pay for dropbox for dedicated storage. it will be there. How long until the first stories of people not being able to get their files back out of BT Sync. Also they don't talk about the hidden cost, that I assume you have to use a lot more of your HD to store other people's stuff and a load of your bandwidth. Remember this system works by using all the clients as the server farm. And for that kind of system you nee…

That's what I thought it was, too, at first glance. It would be some gnarly math to figure out how to make the storage reliable, since clients could arbitrarily connect and disconnect at any time (carrying a portion of your data with it). I suppose it would be an algorithm similar to RAID, except that there would be an algorithm that would detect damage, such as not enough backups online for a certain time, and the risk the data would no longer be available, and then in response create another RAID node.

Bandwidth could be an issue, too. Maybe clients could get bandwidth and storage karma, if they accept a lot of data from other users and a lot of changes to that data.

Interesting idea, anyway.

Edit: maybe you could even sell your processing power for karma, too. And maybe even extract that karma to sell/trade/give to others.

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

#66

Post by jng »

pandeiro wrote: post #46
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.

The same that distributed VCS systems liberated development from a single point of failure, this protocol allows any computer to become responsible of acting as "the always-on server". Now you can use a Dropbox-like thing paying someone else to do something much simpler: run an application to provide the service. Whoever provides the service can even offer redundant service very easily.

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

#67

Post by rogerbinns »

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.…

> Do you trust BitTorrent ...

Note how the company knows how much was synced as reported in the article, although it is unclear exactly what was measured (original file sizes, data transferred, tracker statistics etc). With true privacy the BitTorrent company would have no clue what actually happened.

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

#68

Post by bigiain »

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.…

"Do you trust BitTorrent to properly encrypt your data as they promise? To not send it to someone else on the sly?"

I've currently got BTSync dealing with a bunch of "non-private" data, and EncFS (and BoxCryptor on OS X) encrypting the more private data I'm syncing with BTSync.

I'm still "trusting" the BTSync app not to mess with my machine(s) in unexpected ways - but I have to trust every application I run to do that, Photoshop or Firefox are just as capable of "sending my data so someone else on the sly".

One thing I'm realy liking about the BTSync/EncFS setup is that I can have machines I consider "less trustworthy" to sync/store EncFS encrypted data without having EncFS/BoxCryptor installed or needing the keys. I'm happy enough for a spare machine at work, where other people might have physical access to it, to store EncFS encrypted blobs for me. I'm confident enough that's secured against pretty much everything up to federal law enforcement or nation state level snooping.

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

#69

Post by pivo »

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.

I solved this problem with a $35 raspberrypi and a 2TB external USB disk that I tucked away in a closet at home. It takes very little power so I can leave it on all the time. The btsync command line version for ARM has worked well for me so far.

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

#70

Post by bigiain »

zzzmarcus wrote: post #50
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 thi…

AeroFS's showstopper for me was no support for 32bit machines - my largest collection of storage is an old Mac Mini with half a dozen large usb drives plugged in, but AeroFS wont run on it. (and the single core Mac Mini can't be upgraded to a version of OS X that'll run 64bit java).
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