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BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

770 points by ninthfrank07 14y ago

slg 14y ago
Since there is no central server, doesn't that mean that one device will have to be always on? That would add a degree of overhead and complication that services like Dropbox don't have.
- notdonspaulding 14y ago
  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 changes comes back online.
  - nobodysbusiness 14y ago
    There have been stories on a few of these 'unlimited sync' services in the past few months. While it's a good idea, I really would prefer to have a little space available on a central server. For me to consider switching to this service from Dropbox, it would have to be able to temporarily store some of my files from my work computer so that they could be transferred to my home computer later on when that computer was started up (for example). That is the feature that needs to be implemented for this to truly become a Dropbox-killer.
  - slg 14y ago
    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. Requiring a user who edits files on a laptop to turn their laptop on when they get back to the home/office in order for the changes to be recognize on their desktop seems like a big step backwards. In that use case Sync would just be a glorified USB thumb drive.
    - base698 14y ago
      Unless you have a tools folder with a ton of files and Dropbox has no way to know which ones are the ones you want now. It can take up to a day to sync a large amount of files in my experience. If I have to devise some system to zip my important stuff and keep that up to date, then I may as well just use BTSync for free.
    - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
      I haven't yet looked to see how this service works so correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that you could solve this problem by either leaving the desktop turned on (so that it syncs immediately whenever the laptop changes), or coordinating with the IT department and having them do the same using a file server the desktop will have access to (which IT departments will like because it makes it easier to centralize backups).
      - ekimekim 14y ago
        This is indeed the solution. If you need the feature "needs to work without needing both computers on at the same time", add a third computer that IS always on. Might cost you a small amount of money on say EC2 or something, but probably cheaper than drop box.
        slg 14y ago
        That is an acceptable solution for the HN community, that is not a solution for the general public. Dropbox has reached wider success because you don't need to have an EC2 or know what one is in order to use Dropbox.
    - mikemoka 14y ago
      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.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - slg 14y ago
    Is that really the case? Sync will store data on my hard drive that I don't have access to and that benefits me in no direct way?
    - zanny 14y ago
      No, it will only download copies of data you are interested in. All parties in possession of the same file act as distributed backups of that file, since it is bittorrent.
- AndreasFrom 14y ago
  I just want to note, also regarding the comments on this, that the ability to set up a dedicated server that always has the newest file exists.
- lifeguard 14y ago
  The data source must be online. "We also provide such additional methods of ensuring connectivity as relay and tracker servers."
namityadav 14y ago
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.
- dagurp 14y ago
  Did you also look at SparkleShare?
  - brunoqc 14y ago
    I wish it would work with HTTP.
  - namityadav 14y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion! I just did, and looks like SparkleShare may not be a good tool if you have very large files (GBs).
- ROFISH 14y ago
  I'm looking for something like this too. My big concerns of a Dropbox alternative is: * Ability to handle large files (300MB incompressible Photoshop) and able to handle large complete data stores. (1 TB, which is impossible with Dropbox) * Selectability for certain folders on certain users (no need for all data to be on all machines) * The ability to 'archive' files to only the host. * Good LAN networking with host so that the portable machines (iPads, Retina Macbook Pros with puny 128GB HDD) can use it fine.
- rdl 14y ago
  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.
ritonlajoie 14y ago
What are the differences with AeroFS ?
- ronnier 14y ago
  This seems superior as it provides more advanced configuration and no limits with the number of parties you can invite. It appears to be free. And no central server. Transfers were painfully slow with Aero, I assume this would be faster.
- pixdamix 14y ago
  A de facto standard, potential opensource clients, free, server-less, not tied to a specific company, and more.
  - wmf 14y ago
    Is there any evidence of this?
  - Shish2k 14y ago
    > A de facto standard, > potential opensource clients, > not tied to a specific company, When the source is closed, and the protocol is closed + encrypted? I think you may be a little optimistic... (Though I do hope that either the source or the protocol get opened)
    - iam 14y ago
      I think that's what made the original BitTorrent popular. The open protocol. They really need to do the same here if they want this to take off.
  - raylu 14y ago
    AeroFS is also server-less, though you can run your own servers.
- Dystopian 14y ago
  Not many. There are a few advanced configurations where BTSync trumps Aero (at least last time I used it - someone, please correct me if these have been implemented). - One way sync - Selective device LAN sync (so you can tell it to only sync over LAN) - Self destructing one-time share keys - Less-friction on sharing - using a key based copy and paste system - Powered by BT (this may not be an advantage though since BT is throttled on quite a number of providers through DPI worldwide
azar1 14y ago
Would love it if source was released (or if somebody could point it out to me).
- SkyMarshal 14y ago
  Good question. Can't find it anywhere on their site or github account.
- Shish2k 14y ago
  No source, but they plan to have an API [1]. Personally I'd be quite content if they just documented the protocol... [1] http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/8816-will-syncapp-be-open-source/ http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/8816-will-syncapp-be-open-...
  - EvilLook 14y ago
    The level of asshurt expressed by GreatMarko in that thread is actually astounding.
SkyMarshal 14y ago
TLDR: >BitTorrent Sync’s functionality is comparable to services such as Dropbox and Skydrive, except for the fact that there’s no cloud involved. Users sync the files between their own computers and no third-party has access to it. > It is an ideal tool for people who want to share large amounts of data between computers without going through third-party services. >The Sync application is available for Windows, OSX, Linux and has the ability run on NAS devices through a web-interface. Readers who are interested in giving it a spin can head over to BitTorrent labs [1], where the Sync app can be downloaded. [1]: http://labs.bittorrent.com/ http://labs.bittorrent.com/
- lucb1e 13y ago
  I'm more interested in the TLDR of how this works. Due to firewalls and such, it's technically impossible to have a peer to peer network without requiring port forwarding on at least one side. I wonder if they're really requiring that from users that want to use this. Another way would be to do TCP or UDP hole punching, but that involves a third party for initial setup. Probably possible and probably safe, but I'd like to see a security review of that.
buro9 14y ago
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 next? Hello Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/sc/um5zf95urdk3zmg/2SaSCUIQd8 https://www.dropbox.com/sc/um5zf95urdk3zmg/2SaSCUIQd8 And I've told a few photographers about this, and a few weeks later a friend of a friend of a friend excitedly told me on a forum how you can photo share in Dropbox. And what I'm basically seeing is that the problem of "file sync" is being considered as solved by lay consumers, who really aren't prioritising encryption, and the problems that they now have is "share this directory of photos", and "share that directory of videos", and "sync this music privately, but let me play it back". Dropbox isn't just file sync anymore. What it is, is a serious threat to Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Amazon MP3 Locker, Google Play Music, iTunes, etc. 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.
- ronnier 14y ago
  I really feel that BS is a different use case.
  - buro9 14y ago
    You're probably right... the bittorrent speciality. I guess the marketing is to provide them with a nice level of deniability. It's not a Dropbox competitor, it's just encrypted folder sharing.
    - manishsharan 14y ago
      I would respectfully disagree with what you seem to be implying. This service would mostly be used by us who are wary about trusting Google/Microsoft/Dropbox and the judgement of their automated decision systems with our life . Yesterday there was a HN story about a guy who got kicked off Google Docs because an automated program was trolling/mining through their users files and its judgement was not to be questioned by mere mortals. What if I put a picture of me and my kid playing in the swimming pool -- what is to prevent Dropbox/Google/Skydrive from tagging it as offensive and setting an overzealous DA or social-worker upon my family ? People have been arrested/detained at border crossings for perfectly innocuous pictures like these. Therefore if you think privacy is only important for people stealing stuff, your are being naive.
Vecrios 14y ago
I'm calling this Dropbox for geeks from now on. Looks very promising, though.
wereHamster 14y ago
They have a native linux 64bit client, that's great! The linux binary is cli only, but provides a web interface on port 8888. However, the daemon binds to address 0.0.0.0 and not just localhost (127.0.0.1 or ::1)! So make sure you have a firewall. Otherwise everybody can access the web interface and thus your secrets.
- TheHippo 14y ago
  Or use a config file and bind to whatever you want. Also you could specify a username and a password for the web gui.
notdonspaulding 14y ago
I got in on the closed Alpha just last week, and it immediately fit into a use case I had where I needed to sync a folder on an OSX machine with a remote linux server. SFTP would have worked in this use case just as well, except it can be janky to slot into a non-developer's workflow. Long story short, I setup BS on both machines with an absolute minimum of fuss, copied the password over, and the folder synced. Definitely does one thing and does it well.
uses 14y ago
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 allow, and does things like trying to upload the same file, linearly, to every peer at once. Cubby has limited space and has the same slow syncing problems. I'm running BitTorrent Sync on my 6 year old Windows 7 Thinkpad, a newer Windows 8 desktop, a Digital Ocean Ubuntu VPS, and a Synology DS110j NAS. It runs perfectly on all of the above, and provides a useful web interface for the VPS and NAS.
- evanw 14y ago
  How does it handle scenarios where files were modified offline on two separate devices? Is it able to identify conflicts?
  - uses 14y ago
    Look under "What if several people make changes to the same file?" http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/16410-bittorrent-sync-faq/ http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/16410-bittorrent-sync-faq/
    - zwily 14y ago
      TL;DR - Last writer wins.
- lelandbatey 14y ago
  Well, that description totally sold me on BS. That's like everything I want.
  - omni 14y ago
    Ouch, what an unfortunate acronym. Hopefully people will start using BTS instead.
mrcharles 14y ago
Can someone give me a quick rundown on how this works, vs security of files? If it's using the bittorrent protocol, wouldn't that mean that all your files, even though encrypted, are easily gathered by a third party? Or does this simply make direct connections between PCs you own and people you have authorized to share your files?
- qiemem 14y ago
  From the article: > While Sync uses BitTorrent technology, people’s files are not accessible to outsiders. Only those who have the unique private key can access the shared folder. > > “All the traffic is encrypted using a private key derived from the shared secret. Your files can be viewed and received only by the people with whom you share your private secret,” BitTorrent explains.
  - mrcharles 14y ago
    I read the page, but that doesn't seem clear to me. If they have encrypted versions of my files, they still don't technically have access to them.
    - lifeguard 14y ago
      No. Only key holders have access to the data being shared. It is up to you to authorize every share with a key. Single use keys can also be generated. There are relays if you need them due to firewalls: "We also provide such additional methods of ensuring connectivity as relay and tracker servers." But you can opt out of this config.
  - mtgx 14y ago
    Security wise, is this that different from just making a private torrent yourself and giving it to someone you know?
    - deno 14y ago
      It’s equivalent of making a private torrent of your encrypted content then giving your friend the torrent metadata AND decryption key. That is not including additional features.
mtpearce 14y ago
Creating an AMI wired to s3 seems like an obvious next step.
- rsync 14y ago
  We (rsync.net) will implement this on our storage arrays, provided it can run over SSH in some capacity. That way you can target rsync.net space with BS. We already do this with git-annex.
  - mamcx 14y ago
    That sound great! I'm building a backup service for sql server, and wonder if this route could be better than rsync?
gdw2 14y ago
I'm excited that they support ARM so that we can install it on raspberries, routers, etc.
- pwelch 14y ago
  Agreed. I think that is a pretty good move for adoption. My QNAP NAS has always played well with bittorrent and backups. Adding ARM support means you can use this in a bunch of low power devices.
- argarg 14y ago
  MIPS support would be great too and most likely trivial.
X-Istence 14y ago
Wish the source was made available, I have an OpenIndiana server with several 1 TB drives running ZFS and I would love to use something like this... but only binaries are available.
- Wurlitzer 14y ago
  That's one of the reasons I switched to ZFS on Linux (http://zfsonlinux.org http://zfsonlinux.org). It has been stable for over a year now.
  - X-Istence 14y ago
    If I were to run any other OS with ZFS support it would have to be FreeBSD. I do not at all like the Linux eco-system.
Shish2k 14y ago
Looking at some of the examples, I'm starting to see a future where people trade entirely in hashes - send some amount of bitcoins to address X, receive access to read-only access to bittorrent folder Y which is automatically populated with the latest TV episodes for a series, etc. Any idea how to apply that sort of anonymity and convenience to the real world though? Scanning QR codes with a phone seems to be the best so far, still more fiddly than cash though...
- polarix 14y ago
  You might think you could possibly have done this in the physical world for a few years now. Don't fool yourself. You have a face and DNA. You will not be anonymous (or even pseudonymous) as long as you carry a body.
  - fragsworth 14y ago
    Your actions can (and should) be anonymous in situations where there is an expectation of privacy.
- ephoz 14y ago
  No one's using QR codes. See: http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/ http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/
weej 14y ago
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, which does limit is platform offering (currently, no mobile). http://www.truecrypt.org/ http://www.truecrypt.org/
- illicium 14y ago
  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
  - eknkc 14y ago
    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.
    - weej 14y ago
      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 https://www.dropbox.com/developers/core/api#chunked-upload
  - weej 14y ago
    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.
lifeguard 14y ago
P2P Protocol BitTorrent Sync synchronizes your files using a peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol. This protocol is very effective for transferring large files across multiple devices, and is very similar to the powerful protocol used by applications like µTorrent and BitTorrent. The data is transferred in pieces from each of the syncing devices, and BitTorrent Sync chooses the optimal algorithm to make sure you have a maximum download and upload speed during the process. The devices you setup to sync are connected directly using UDP, NAT traversal and UPnP port mapping. We also provide such additional methods of ensuring connectivity as relay and tracker servers. If your devices are on the same local network, BitTorrent Sync will use your LAN for faster synchronization. http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync/technology.html http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync/technology.html
solarkennedy 14y ago
I'm writing a puppet module to make it easy to declare shared folders. I'm almost done: https://github.com/solarkennedy/puppet-btsync https://github.com/solarkennedy/puppet-btsync The config file is versatile enough to allow you to turn off the relay servers / dht / upnp, etc and simply declare static peers, which is cool.
lifeformed 14y ago
It doesn't feel like this overlaps with my need for Dropbox. I use Dropbox for file sharing, backup, version control, and the ability to access my files at any time from any computer (through the website). Actually syncing between computers is just a small part of it.
mmanfrin 14y ago
If I remember correctly, this is a lot closer to what the initial technology of bit torrent was developed for: secure, distributed storage.
goronbjorn 14y ago
This seems ideal for the enterprise use case, in particular because it's extremely performant, secure, and doesn't require a central/third-party server (e.g. AWS). The 'must always be online' requirement is actually a plus, not a minus for that crowd. Enterprises are generally very concerned about being able to revoke access to a given resource instantaneously. Any app that stores local copies complicates that quite a bit. People will dismiss this as 'a toy that geeks use', but as Chris Dixon has noted, 'what the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years' [1] [1] http://cdixon.org/2013/03/02/what-the-smartest-people-do-on-the-weekend-is-what-everyone-else-will-do-during-the-week-in-ten-years/ http://cdixon.org/2013/03/02/what-the-smartest-people-do-on-...
ChuckMcM 14y ago
So now you have in place all the bits you need for a "members only" netnews feed, someone should go dig up the code and create a 'news' sync'd document. If you played your cards right you could use off the shelf news readers that look into a local repo of the news. With just a tiny bit of crypto code you could add a repudiation feature (keys signed by the secret vs the secret itself) and control access to both individual groups and individual users.
- vy8vWJlco 14y ago
  Just to make the connection for others, you are describing something that can be used for chat AND binaries. As ugly a hack as it might be, (speaking to the choir, I know) there is tremendous value in simply being able to move messages (in this case, as simple files), between buddies without needing an "account" with a "service" (of the type that motivates people to excessively use "quotes").
cobookman 14y ago
If they allowed us to pick and choose what we want to download from friends shares as well as search our friends shares, this could become an interesting tool. Imagine a private p2p site that you and your friends use. You choose who to share with and what files you can see. Then add links to give to friends so attaching files in emails would be a sinch.
pointernil 14y ago
Is this usable as a backup offsite/distributed store? Put backup into TrueCrypt Container which itself is located in a BT Sync folder. Invite other devices + "partners" to sync that folder ... any thoughts on this usage scenario with BT Sync?
ivanist 14y ago
Does the traffic from this appear same as P2P traffic? I think my company might block my internet access if it finds out that I am doing p2p sharing; and I don't want that to happen.
rdl 14y ago
I don't see why you'd use this instead of AeroFS. AeroFS also has much more useful business features once you grow into needing that.
jjsz 14y ago
This ideological P2P sync will only work if the server you're using it on has the highest chance of staying on. Which is a home server. How can BS connect to ownCloud to push the updated files to avoid an emergency where, you're not a Dropbox member, and your device was stolen and turned off?
XorNot 14y ago
I was in the alpha for this, but didn't use it. The single reason was that they had no solution for "two files modified while offline" at the time. This is just far too likely for me to remain an unaddressed issue. I don't know if it's been improved since then.
- jjoergensen 14y ago
  A solution could be to give each of your machines their own folder. In this folder they are the source and the only machine allowed to make changes. Other machines can read, but not update.
- veidr 14y ago
  This is my biggest issue with BS also (having only started testing it today). It is definitely an issue, and it definitely nukes files, apparently permanently with no recourse. I tested it out like this, on two machines (Mac Pro No. 5 and MacBook Pro No. 5, sorry for the confusingly similar names): [mason@MacBook-Pro-No-5 ~]$ cd BTSync/ [mason@MacBook-Pro-No-5 BTSync]$ echo 'Hey man, this is draft one. ' > my_awesome_file.txt Here I waited for it to sync and confirmed the same file was on both machines. Then, in two terminal windows: [mason@Mac-Pro-No-5 BTSync]$ echo 'hello from Mac Pro at remote office' >> my_awesome_file.txt [mason@MacBook-Pro-No-5 BTSync]$ echo 'hello again from local office' >> my_awesome_file.txt I pressed Return as close to simultaneously as I could in each window, with the MacBook Pro No. 5 machine being second. While it sync'd, I just had time to visually confirm that the contents of the two files were as expected, and different from each other. MacBook Pro No. 5's file: Hey man, this is draft one. hello again from local office Mac Pro No. 5's file: Hey man, this is draft one. hello from Mac Pro at remote office A second later, the sync was complete. The file from Mac Pro No. 5 was completely gone, and both machines's my_awesome_file.txt now contained: Hey man, this is draft one. hello again from local office I then looked in the .SyncTrash dir on both machines, to see if the nuked file made it in there, but it did not. Conclusion: Modifying a file on two machines will cause one of the conflicting versions to be annihilated permanently. Furthermore, this can happen nearly instantaneously, making it unlikely that any backup mechanism would be able to preserve the 'losing' version of the file. Thoughts: I think this is a potentially serious problem and I hope they fix it. Still, to me personally, this is probably preferable to my main problems with Dropbox (slow speeds and utterly broken symlink behavior, as discussed elsewhere in this thread). Overall I am still pretty excited about this product.
webwanderings 14y ago
This isn't a Dropbox alternative by any means. From what I could understand, you need to keep two of your machines ON in order to sync. The best it could be called is replacement of your USB drive. AeroFS does something similar and it apparently doesn't require keeping two of your machines On at the same time, though it didn't work for me as advertised, so I gave up on AeroFS. Using Dropbox in the title with this, is misleading.
- gcr 14y ago
  This was meant to address a specific use case that Dropbox does not. I don't want a central service like Dropbox to host my files. This design decision means that I must keep one or two of my machines on for my files to be available.
shmerl 14y ago
Are there any open source clients for that?
joshaidan 14y ago
What I think will be an interesting use case for this technology is public file sharing. If I want to share files with the general public I could just give them a read-only key and then they'll have a folder that syncs with whatever files I put into it. It's a new way of content distribution. Will this be how people distribute music and TV shows? Will this be the way people subscribe to content in the future? I could be a game developer, and I could give my users a read-only key to download my game and at the same time they'll receive any updates I make to the game when I update the files in the folder.
- twoodfin 14y ago
  This is indeed a great technology. The "push" analog to the original BitTorrent's "pull". But there's also potential for abuse (or greater freedom depending on how you look at it!). Say I create a sync folder containing a bunch of popular films and then widely distribute the read-only key. Thousands subscribe. Now I have access to what amounts to a botnet that will widely distribute whatever content I see fit to deposit, more or less untraceably because the P2P network is so huge, and I or my co-conspirators can insert or retrieve content from any part of it.
  - GhotiFish 14y ago
    That sounds like a brilliant thing for free speech, but watch out, I'm not sure there's a guarantee of anonymity in crowds for people who have read-write access, they may be identifiable. Still reading the analysis of the system. Have to read through the spec.
    - twoodfin 14y ago
      What are you reading that has the details? It would seem to me that read-only peers would have to have the ability to propagate writes across the network. Why would they have to identify the origin of the change if they obviously have cryptographically secure evidence that the change is valid?
tomkinstinch 14y ago
This seems like a great way to deploy code and files to thousands of servers. Anyone here already using BitTorrent for deployment?
- ominous_prime 14y ago
  Many years ago, I used BT to distribute multi-GB files across some clusters. Anecdotally, it worked great! Didn't need to do it again though, so I never cleaned up or documented the process.
- nthitz 14y ago
  TorrentFreak had a few articles about Twitter and FB using BitTorrent for deployment http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-makes-twitters-server-deployment-75-faster-100716/ http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-makes-twitters-server-dep... http://torrentfreak.com/facebook-uses-bittorrent-and-they-love-it-100625/ http://torrentfreak.com/facebook-uses-bittorrent-and-they-lo... More recently Ars wrote about it as well http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/04/exclusive-a-behind-the-scenes-look-at-facebook-release-engineering/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/04/exclusive-a-behind-t...
stephengillie 14y ago
So this will run on RasPi? It seems like the next step is for someone to attach a NAS to a RasPi and make a "syncbox" -- a NAS which auto-syncs to the other NASes you've configured across the internet. For end users, they would get 2 and share a secret between them, then install one at 2 separate offices (or home and office), and any files dumped onto one NAS are replicated to the other. Basically Dropbox without file limits.
- sehugg 14y ago
  There's a Linux ARM binary, so ... maybe?
- te_chris 14y ago
  Would totally buy something like that that worked out of the box.
  - urza 14y ago
    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transporterguy/transporter-a-new-way-to-share-access-and-protect http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transporterguy/transport...
    - dombili 14y ago
      Works globally, only ships within the US. That's awesome.
      - stephengillie 14y ago
        Looking at this, it looks like a 1-stop sharing solution. Im assuming that when a user shares files from this device, the connection is routed from Transporter's servers to the users device, allowing the downloader to directly copy the users file. I wonder how replication between 2 devices would work...
        bluefinity 14y ago
thisisrobv 14y ago
The "Dropbox Alternative" marketing line seems to really be what's confusing people... this is not Dropbox. You have to have a source always online, there's no third party service sitting in the cloud syncing all of your computers, it passes that responsibilty onto the user. That said, I'm surprised they aren't trying to "consumerize" this into a hardware product. Space Monkey has seen a ton of success recently and are well beyond their funding goal on Kickstarter(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clintgc/space-monkey-taking-the-cloud-out-of-the-datacente http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clintgc/space-monkey-tak...). The thing that immediately came to mind for me is that this is really a job for Bittorrent. A NAS device makes complete sense and if they could build a better experience around that, similar to what Space Monkey is doing, seems like a huge opportunity.
Xanza 14y ago
Honestly, I really don't think BTSync should be compared to dropbox, it sends the wrong message. When people say 'dropbox alternative' people immediately think "Oh cool, so it can do everything dropbox can do?" Which we all know isn't the case here. The best thing about BTSync is it's basically zero configuration. I have it running on 10 of my boxes so far, and it's working amazingly. Far better than dropbox -- however, I only need it to sync files between hardware, not for anything else, like photo sharing, or advanced configuration based sharing. I just want file A, to be on all configured servers. TL;DR: Don't compare BTSync to Dropbox, it's not a dropbox alternative. It's something completely different, entirely.
alyandon 14y ago
Dropbox is the only cloud sync client that I've found so far that has decent support for hosting TrueCrypt containers. It's unfortunate that my particular use case is so narrow because I can't really consider something to be a dropbox replacement unless it: 1) has a fully supported client on Windows, OS X and Linux 2) has that capability to sync with mobile devices 3) uses the native file system apis available on each platform to avoid doing scans on large numbers of files looking for changes by the last modified timestamp (so I don't have to disable the TrueCrypt feature that avoids updating the timestamp on containers) 4) transmits only the changed content of the file instead of the entire file (so I don't have to transmit the entire TrueCrypt container when only some blocks in the container have been modified) Has anyone ran across a service that would allow me to utilize TrueCrypt volumes as easily as DropBox does across the major desktop operating systems?
gcr 14y ago
This is really great. I like how on Linux, you can have it run from either a web interface or a (quite simple) .json config file.
fastball 14y ago
> Those in the closed Alpha have already synced more than 200TB since we started the program,” BitTorrent announces. Umm, how do they know this if the sync is secure and only peer-to-peer?
- evoltix 14y ago
  Good point. Not sure if this has anything to do with it but by default, "Use relay server when required" is checked for each folder you share. But I would hope that it doesn't go through a relay server all the time.
- Mindless2112 14y ago
  Transfers being peer-to-peer doesn't prevent them from collecting statistics in the client.
Angostura 14y ago
Is this the first time that a product has been launched with the primary motivation of showing that a particular protocol is good for things other illegal filesharing? Up until now BitTorrent aficionados have tended to be forced back to the "I use it for Linux distros" when defending the protocol against ISPs and businesses looking to shape or block BT traffic. If this takes off, then the "its only used for nefarious purposes" argument will be much harder to make. I suspect that this is the real reason it's being launched - not that that's a bad thing.
- ephoz 14y ago
  Many gamers are using BitTorrent through Valve's Steam. By which I mean, that p2p file sharing is hardly nefarious. It's just a clever use of bandwidth.
  - javanix 14y ago
    Is Steam actually using BitTorrent? I thought they were using something proprietary. If they are not using BitTorrent then Sync would provide a new, plausible way to stop ISPs from blocking that specific protocol.
    - ephoz 14y ago
      I think I got a little ahead of myself here, sorry. Bram Cohen (who is known for inventing BitTorrent) has worked shortly with Valve on Steam. I can't find a source quoting Steam as using BitTorrent though, so let's assume that no. Well, apparently Blizzard does. :) Quoting http://www.wowpedia.org/Blizzard_Downloader http://www.wowpedia.org/Blizzard_Downloader
    - pm90 14y ago
      I remember that Ubuntu used to be available via torrents
      - e12e 14y ago
        Still is? http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/alternative-downloads http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/alternative-downloads There's also http://debtorrent.alioth.debian.org/ http://debtorrent.alioth.debian.org/ Apparently CCP is planning to use bittorrent for the next generation launcher for EVE online: http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/74573 http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/74573
brent_noorda 14y ago
Oh Happy Day! Now all our family members can once again share many many gigabytes of family photos and movies. (I have so missed FolderShare!)
siculars 14y ago
I love everything about this. This is like a dark encrypted p2p network. Looking forward to setting up family music sharing folders.
rijoja 14y ago
what's really nice is how it works across modems and routers. I can't listen to my modems port in a classical sense, so a webserver wouldn't work. But this connects easily with my VPN! Which is fantastic. Setting this up manually would've been really hard work.
api 14y ago
And the wheel turns: http://www.retrologic.com/jargon/W/wheel-of-reincarnation.html http://www.retrologic.com/jargon/W/wheel-of-reincarnation.ht... The wheel of reincarnation I'm referring to in this case is the cycling between a mainframe/thin-client architecture and a PC-based distributed architecture. In ye olde days it was mainframes and dumb terminals. Then it was PCs and LANs/the Internet. Then it was web browsers and tablets (dumb terminal 2.0) and The Cloud (mainframe 2.0). Now the wheel is turning once again... The cloud is great as long as I don't care who owns my data, want to pay constantly for hosting it (or put up with arbitrary and changeable limits), have no privacy, lose my data when a startup goes out of business, etc.
- pm90 14y ago
  Indeed. It seems fortunate that this got released a few days after CISPA was passed.
- tunesmith 14y ago
  Isn't the ideal kinda both/neither? Get a "dumb" laptop with plenty of horsepower/space, sign in to something and sync everything over (chef/puppet/btsync/dropbox), do a bunch of work locally, then wipe the laptop. I'd love to have my whole laptop identity work that way. It's sort of possible now but it takes forever to convert all your data and apps over to that approach.
  - burrows 14y ago
    You might like http://projectmeadow.com http://projectmeadow.com
jjoergensen 14y ago
Does anyone have experience with http://www.symform.com http://www.symform.com?
evoltix 14y ago
I wonder how this will affect Space Monkey. Thoughts?
malbs 14y ago
So I just set this up on my home machine and a work machine.. I got caught out with the pre-defined host config because I didn't realise I needed to allow both tcp AND udp through the firewall, so my work machine was unable to access my privately shared folder on the home machine (tracker server/relay server/dht options all disabled) Once that was sorted, I have a perfectly good replication system working amonst all my machines, just like dropbox, without the centralised control, this is awesome
tlrobinson 14y ago
Ok, now make it totally decentralized and peer-to-peer, with a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin used to automatically pay peers that replicate your data on an ongoing basis. There are lots of hard problems to be solved in such a system (mostly dealing with the lack of trust), but I think it would be totally badass.
lizzard 14y ago
This is fantastic. It's easy to set up and use. I can share folders without having to rearrange anything. I love that you don't have to make an account. Awesome for privacy!!
overgard 14y ago
I'm sort of amused at all the dropbox comparisons. This solves a totally different problem which dropbox was HORRIBLE at, which is sharing music/movie collections across my machines at home. I'll still probably use dropbox for documents and stuff, but frankly I never wanted to put my music and tv shows into dropbox because it would have taken up most of my space very quickly for the dubious "feature" of uploading all my pirated stuff to a centralized location. Yay. No way. Sidenote, but, if Dropbox people happen to be reading this, maybe this will be a hint: PLEASE ADD MULTIFOLDER SUPPORT. (As in, multiple roots). I know you're trying to go for a simple aesthetic etc. etc., so you only have "one" dropbox, but BTSync makes doing that trivially easy. You have no excuse.
pixelcort 14y ago
Very cool; this seems to sync symlinks as-is, without traversing into whatever they're pointing at.
Down_n_Out 14y ago
I think this is very promising, as a business owner I have a desktop in the office and a laptop for the road, it makes for a secure way to sync the "customer-folders" between both PC's and saves me from getting my laptop out because there's a file on there that isn't yet on the desktop ... While Dropbox is a good tool, I'd be more at ease the files are transfered securely/encrypted... And not resting on some cloud server, call it paranoid or whatever you want... Yes, I could use Truecrypt or whatever, but this has the "approachability" factor in its favor ... And no I'm not saying Truecrypt is difficult, I'm speaking more in general... I will probably test this out.
_pmf_ 14y ago
> "Another advantage is that there are no storage or transfer limits, so users can sync as many files as they want, for free." Yes, I believe that, because that's a completely solid business model for them.
- nwh 14y ago
  Well they're not paying for storage or transfer; why does it have an impact on the company?
  - _pmf_ 14y ago
    Apparently, I'm stupid. But then the claim that the speed is comparable to Dropbox is fishy.
    - nwh 14y ago
      The reliability would probably suffer somewhat. I doubt I could use it at a lot of places that filter traditional p2p traffic.
ivanb 14y ago
This can be a good tool for a game dev studio where there are gigabytes of artwork that needs to be shared between multiple departments.
skeletonjelly 14y ago
Surprised nobody has mentioned Wuala. It was doing this in 2008. Just never got traction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuala
aychedee 14y ago
This is much more interesting than Dropbox... http://www.aychedee.com/2013/04/24/dead-drop-with-bittorrent-sync/ http://www.aychedee.com/2013/04/24/dead-drop-with-bittorrent...
manish_gill 14y ago
Can anyone break down the security for me? Are they using PGP? How does the shared secret thing work?
- dmatlack 14y ago
  It uses AES (symmetric key cryptography) with a 256 bit key (which they refer to as a 32-character "secret").
tobeportable 14y ago
Best [vps-cloud_storage] setup to get "cloud syncing" ?
- tobeportable 14y ago
  Contabo : VPS with 200GB @ 10 EUR / month : http://contabo.com/?show=vps http://contabo.com/?show=vps
- tobeportable 13y ago
  backupsify : 500GB @ 7$/month atm
brownbat 14y ago
I see Dropbox mostly as a tool to send large files between computers that aren't both on at the same time: http://xkcd.com/949/ http://xkcd.com/949/ It'd be nice to do that without an escrow, but I'm not sure that's really possible (without steep obligations on members as to hosting capacity and uptime).
visarga 14y ago
Instead of private (darknet) bittorrenting I'd rather have a solution for all those files with few seeders who are half dead, in the cloud. It's easy to torrent the latest episode. Everyone is in on that. But what about the long tail? We need a different scheme there. My idea would be to lump together all the files in a huge torrent. That would inevitably attract many peers, so the problem would be solved if users did selective downloading, as the whole would be too large for any one of them. The system would need to use some disk space and bandwidth from each peer to host some shards of the whole. Not all the data in the mega-torrent would be downloaded, just some sensible section of it, like, say, 5GB. Between 1000 users, we could have 1TB of files. With a million, we could have a huge library. This way we could have enough seeds for any part of the whole. Of course, it would need a way to add new stuff on the fly and balance the replicas. tl;dr - I'd rather have a solution for rare torrents. I'm worried for all the content that is not "hot enough". We could amass a huge library of rare stuff, in time.
- pixelcort 14y ago
  There are other P2P networks that can give you files based on a hash of their content, for example ED2K and Kademlia. I think even Gnutella supports hash-based retrieval. BitTorrent clients now have distributed hash tables accessible; it would be nice if magnet URLs could just point to a hash of the file, instead of to a specific torrent. Bonus: Even ED2K links point to a tree of hashes, so you can verify the data while it is being downloaded.
joeblau 14y ago
Finally! I was trying to get something like this made 6-7 years ago for distributing CRL's. I'm glad to see it's up and running, now all I need is a buddy to test this out with. edit: The UX needs a bit of polishing. I don't think my Mom is going to be able to figure this out.
vy8vWJlco 13y ago
One of the comments on the TorrentFreak article compares BTSync to FTP. In one sense, that is not an accurate comparison at all. And yet, it has enormous potential to fill a similar role. The secret/passphrase amounts simply to a globally-addressable identifier to a set of folders that just happen to sync. It will be trivial to script a loop to watch a control file in a folder to enable automatic FTP-like transfers between my friends. Even without keeping the "secret" secret, instead simply treating it as public but discardable, you have something that can rival (and is a faster-moving target than) file lockers like Mega and Rapidshare (300 TB do not need to be re-uploaded in order to change the secret/address). The sad thing is that NAT and firewalls have starved the Internet to the point that that simple property (global addressing) seems almost miraculous. (And that is why IPv6 - or something permitting global addressability, instead of carrier-grade NAT - is so important going forward.)
nano111 13y ago
Can you mark one of the node as untrusted and keep the data encrypted for them?

770 points by ninthfrank07 14y ago

slg 14y ago

Since there is no central server, doesn't that mean that one device will have to be always on? That would add a degree of overhead and complication that services like Dropbox don't have.

notdonspaulding 14y ago
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 changes comes back online.
- nobodysbusiness 14y ago
  There have been stories on a few of these 'unlimited sync' services in the past few months. While it's a good idea, I really would prefer to have a little space available on a central server. For me to consider switching to this service from Dropbox, it would have to be able to temporarily store some of my files from my work computer so that they could be transferred to my home computer later on when that computer was started up (for example). That is the feature that needs to be implemented for this to truly become a Dropbox-killer.
- slg 14y ago
  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. Requiring a user who edits files on a laptop to turn their laptop on when they get back to the home/office in order for the changes to be recognize on their desktop seems like a big step backwards. In that use case Sync would just be a glorified USB thumb drive.
  - base698 14y ago
    Unless you have a tools folder with a ton of files and Dropbox has no way to know which ones are the ones you want now. It can take up to a day to sync a large amount of files in my experience. If I have to devise some system to zip my important stuff and keep that up to date, then I may as well just use BTSync for free.
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    I haven't yet looked to see how this service works so correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that you could solve this problem by either leaving the desktop turned on (so that it syncs immediately whenever the laptop changes), or coordinating with the IT department and having them do the same using a file server the desktop will have access to (which IT departments will like because it makes it easier to centralize backups).
    - ekimekim 14y ago
      This is indeed the solution. If you need the feature "needs to work without needing both computers on at the same time", add a third computer that IS always on. Might cost you a small amount of money on say EC2 or something, but probably cheaper than drop box.
      - slg 14y ago
        That is an acceptable solution for the HN community, that is not a solution for the general public. Dropbox has reached wider success because you don't need to have an EC2 or know what one is in order to use Dropbox.
  - mikemoka 14y ago
    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.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- slg 14y ago
  Is that really the case? Sync will store data on my hard drive that I don't have access to and that benefits me in no direct way?
  - zanny 14y ago
    No, it will only download copies of data you are interested in. All parties in possession of the same file act as distributed backups of that file, since it is bittorrent.
AndreasFrom 14y ago
I just want to note, also regarding the comments on this, that the ability to set up a dedicated server that always has the newest file exists.
lifeguard 14y ago
The data source must be online. "We also provide such additional methods of ensuring connectivity as relay and tracker servers."

namityadav 14y ago

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.

dagurp 14y ago
Did you also look at SparkleShare?
- brunoqc 14y ago
  I wish it would work with HTTP.
- namityadav 14y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion! I just did, and looks like SparkleShare may not be a good tool if you have very large files (GBs).
ROFISH 14y ago
I'm looking for something like this too. My big concerns of a Dropbox alternative is: * Ability to handle large files (300MB incompressible Photoshop) and able to handle large complete data stores. (1 TB, which is impossible with Dropbox) * Selectability for certain folders on certain users (no need for all data to be on all machines) * The ability to 'archive' files to only the host. * Good LAN networking with host so that the portable machines (iPads, Retina Macbook Pros with puny 128GB HDD) can use it fine.
rdl 14y ago
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.

ritonlajoie 14y ago

What are the differences with AeroFS ?

ronnier 14y ago
This seems superior as it provides more advanced configuration and no limits with the number of parties you can invite. It appears to be free. And no central server. Transfers were painfully slow with Aero, I assume this would be faster.
pixdamix 14y ago
A de facto standard, potential opensource clients, free, server-less, not tied to a specific company, and more.
- wmf 14y ago
  Is there any evidence of this?
- Shish2k 14y ago
  > A de facto standard, > potential opensource clients, > not tied to a specific company, When the source is closed, and the protocol is closed + encrypted? I think you may be a little optimistic... (Though I do hope that either the source or the protocol get opened)
  - iam 14y ago
    I think that's what made the original BitTorrent popular. The open protocol. They really need to do the same here if they want this to take off.
- raylu 14y ago
  AeroFS is also server-less, though you can run your own servers.
Dystopian 14y ago
Not many. There are a few advanced configurations where BTSync trumps Aero (at least last time I used it - someone, please correct me if these have been implemented). - One way sync - Selective device LAN sync (so you can tell it to only sync over LAN) - Self destructing one-time share keys - Less-friction on sharing - using a key based copy and paste system - Powered by BT (this may not be an advantage though since BT is throttled on quite a number of providers through DPI worldwide

azar1 14y ago

Would love it if source was released (or if somebody could point it out to me).

SkyMarshal 14y ago
Good question. Can't find it anywhere on their site or github account.
Shish2k 14y ago
No source, but they plan to have an API [1]. Personally I'd be quite content if they just documented the protocol... [1] http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/8816-will-syncapp-be-open-source/ http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/8816-will-syncapp-be-open-...
- EvilLook 14y ago
  The level of asshurt expressed by GreatMarko in that thread is actually astounding.

SkyMarshal 14y ago

TLDR: >BitTorrent Sync’s functionality is comparable to services such as Dropbox and Skydrive, except for the fact that there’s no cloud involved. Users sync the files between their own computers and no third-party has access to it. > It is an ideal tool for people who want to share large amounts of data between computers without going through third-party services. >The Sync application is available for Windows, OSX, Linux and has the ability run on NAS devices through a web-interface. Readers who are interested in giving it a spin can head over to BitTorrent labs [1], where the Sync app can be downloaded. [1]: http://labs.bittorrent.com/ http://labs.bittorrent.com/

lucb1e 13y ago
I'm more interested in the TLDR of how this works. Due to firewalls and such, it's technically impossible to have a peer to peer network without requiring port forwarding on at least one side. I wonder if they're really requiring that from users that want to use this. Another way would be to do TCP or UDP hole punching, but that involves a third party for initial setup. Probably possible and probably safe, but I'd like to see a security review of that.

buro9 14y ago

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 next? Hello Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/sc/um5zf95urdk3zmg/2SaSCUIQd8 https://www.dropbox.com/sc/um5zf95urdk3zmg/2SaSCUIQd8 And I've told a few photographers about this, and a few weeks later a friend of a friend of a friend excitedly told me on a forum how you can photo share in Dropbox. And what I'm basically seeing is that the problem of "file sync" is being considered as solved by lay consumers, who really aren't prioritising encryption, and the problems that they now have is "share this directory of photos", and "share that directory of videos", and "sync this music privately, but let me play it back". Dropbox isn't just file sync anymore. What it is, is a serious threat to Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Amazon MP3 Locker, Google Play Music, iTunes, etc. 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.

ronnier 14y ago
I really feel that BS is a different use case.
- buro9 14y ago
  You're probably right... the bittorrent speciality. I guess the marketing is to provide them with a nice level of deniability. It's not a Dropbox competitor, it's just encrypted folder sharing.
  - manishsharan 14y ago
    I would respectfully disagree with what you seem to be implying. This service would mostly be used by us who are wary about trusting Google/Microsoft/Dropbox and the judgement of their automated decision systems with our life . Yesterday there was a HN story about a guy who got kicked off Google Docs because an automated program was trolling/mining through their users files and its judgement was not to be questioned by mere mortals. What if I put a picture of me and my kid playing in the swimming pool -- what is to prevent Dropbox/Google/Skydrive from tagging it as offensive and setting an overzealous DA or social-worker upon my family ? People have been arrested/detained at border crossings for perfectly innocuous pictures like these. Therefore if you think privacy is only important for people stealing stuff, your are being naive.

Vecrios 14y ago

I'm calling this Dropbox for geeks from now on. Looks very promising, though.

wereHamster 14y ago

They have a native linux 64bit client, that's great! The linux binary is cli only, but provides a web interface on port 8888. However, the daemon binds to address 0.0.0.0 and not just localhost (127.0.0.1 or ::1)! So make sure you have a firewall. Otherwise everybody can access the web interface and thus your secrets.

TheHippo 14y ago
Or use a config file and bind to whatever you want. Also you could specify a username and a password for the web gui.

notdonspaulding 14y ago

I got in on the closed Alpha just last week, and it immediately fit into a use case I had where I needed to sync a folder on an OSX machine with a remote linux server. SFTP would have worked in this use case just as well, except it can be janky to slot into a non-developer's workflow. Long story short, I setup BS on both machines with an absolute minimum of fuss, copied the password over, and the folder synced. Definitely does one thing and does it well.

uses 14y ago

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 allow, and does things like trying to upload the same file, linearly, to every peer at once. Cubby has limited space and has the same slow syncing problems. I'm running BitTorrent Sync on my 6 year old Windows 7 Thinkpad, a newer Windows 8 desktop, a Digital Ocean Ubuntu VPS, and a Synology DS110j NAS. It runs perfectly on all of the above, and provides a useful web interface for the VPS and NAS.

evanw 14y ago
How does it handle scenarios where files were modified offline on two separate devices? Is it able to identify conflicts?
- uses 14y ago
  Look under "What if several people make changes to the same file?" http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/16410-bittorrent-sync-faq/ http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/16410-bittorrent-sync-faq/
  - zwily 14y ago
    TL;DR - Last writer wins.
lelandbatey 14y ago
Well, that description totally sold me on BS. That's like everything I want.
- omni 14y ago
  Ouch, what an unfortunate acronym. Hopefully people will start using BTS instead.

mrcharles 14y ago

Can someone give me a quick rundown on how this works, vs security of files? If it's using the bittorrent protocol, wouldn't that mean that all your files, even though encrypted, are easily gathered by a third party? Or does this simply make direct connections between PCs you own and people you have authorized to share your files?

qiemem 14y ago
From the article: > While Sync uses BitTorrent technology, people’s files are not accessible to outsiders. Only those who have the unique private key can access the shared folder. > > “All the traffic is encrypted using a private key derived from the shared secret. Your files can be viewed and received only by the people with whom you share your private secret,” BitTorrent explains.
- mrcharles 14y ago
  I read the page, but that doesn't seem clear to me. If they have encrypted versions of my files, they still don't technically have access to them.
  - lifeguard 14y ago
    No. Only key holders have access to the data being shared. It is up to you to authorize every share with a key. Single use keys can also be generated. There are relays if you need them due to firewalls: "We also provide such additional methods of ensuring connectivity as relay and tracker servers." But you can opt out of this config.
- mtgx 14y ago
  Security wise, is this that different from just making a private torrent yourself and giving it to someone you know?
  - deno 14y ago
    It’s equivalent of making a private torrent of your encrypted content then giving your friend the torrent metadata AND decryption key. That is not including additional features.

mtpearce 14y ago

Creating an AMI wired to s3 seems like an obvious next step.

rsync 14y ago
We (rsync.net) will implement this on our storage arrays, provided it can run over SSH in some capacity. That way you can target rsync.net space with BS. We already do this with git-annex.
- mamcx 14y ago
  That sound great! I'm building a backup service for sql server, and wonder if this route could be better than rsync?

gdw2 14y ago

I'm excited that they support ARM so that we can install it on raspberries, routers, etc.

pwelch 14y ago
Agreed. I think that is a pretty good move for adoption. My QNAP NAS has always played well with bittorrent and backups. Adding ARM support means you can use this in a bunch of low power devices.
argarg 14y ago
MIPS support would be great too and most likely trivial.

X-Istence 14y ago

Wish the source was made available, I have an OpenIndiana server with several 1 TB drives running ZFS and I would love to use something like this... but only binaries are available.

Wurlitzer 14y ago
That's one of the reasons I switched to ZFS on Linux (http://zfsonlinux.org http://zfsonlinux.org). It has been stable for over a year now.
- X-Istence 14y ago
  If I were to run any other OS with ZFS support it would have to be FreeBSD. I do not at all like the Linux eco-system.

Shish2k 14y ago

Looking at some of the examples, I'm starting to see a future where people trade entirely in hashes - send some amount of bitcoins to address X, receive access to read-only access to bittorrent folder Y which is automatically populated with the latest TV episodes for a series, etc. Any idea how to apply that sort of anonymity and convenience to the real world though? Scanning QR codes with a phone seems to be the best so far, still more fiddly than cash though...

polarix 14y ago
You might think you could possibly have done this in the physical world for a few years now. Don't fool yourself. You have a face and DNA. You will not be anonymous (or even pseudonymous) as long as you carry a body.
- fragsworth 14y ago
  Your actions can (and should) be anonymous in situations where there is an expectation of privacy.
ephoz 14y ago
No one's using QR codes. See: http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/ http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/

weej 14y ago

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, which does limit is platform offering (currently, no mobile). http://www.truecrypt.org/ http://www.truecrypt.org/

illicium 14y ago
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
- eknkc 14y ago
  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.
  - weej 14y ago
    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 https://www.dropbox.com/developers/core/api#chunked-upload
- weej 14y ago
  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.

lifeguard 14y ago

P2P Protocol BitTorrent Sync synchronizes your files using a peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol. This protocol is very effective for transferring large files across multiple devices, and is very similar to the powerful protocol used by applications like µTorrent and BitTorrent. The data is transferred in pieces from each of the syncing devices, and BitTorrent Sync chooses the optimal algorithm to make sure you have a maximum download and upload speed during the process. The devices you setup to sync are connected directly using UDP, NAT traversal and UPnP port mapping. We also provide such additional methods of ensuring connectivity as relay and tracker servers. If your devices are on the same local network, BitTorrent Sync will use your LAN for faster synchronization. http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync/technology.html http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync/technology.html

solarkennedy 14y ago

I'm writing a puppet module to make it easy to declare shared folders. I'm almost done: https://github.com/solarkennedy/puppet-btsync https://github.com/solarkennedy/puppet-btsync The config file is versatile enough to allow you to turn off the relay servers / dht / upnp, etc and simply declare static peers, which is cool.

lifeformed 14y ago

It doesn't feel like this overlaps with my need for Dropbox. I use Dropbox for file sharing, backup, version control, and the ability to access my files at any time from any computer (through the website). Actually syncing between computers is just a small part of it.

mmanfrin 14y ago

If I remember correctly, this is a lot closer to what the initial technology of bit torrent was developed for: secure, distributed storage.

goronbjorn 14y ago

This seems ideal for the enterprise use case, in particular because it's extremely performant, secure, and doesn't require a central/third-party server (e.g. AWS). The 'must always be online' requirement is actually a plus, not a minus for that crowd. Enterprises are generally very concerned about being able to revoke access to a given resource instantaneously. Any app that stores local copies complicates that quite a bit. People will dismiss this as 'a toy that geeks use', but as Chris Dixon has noted, 'what the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years' [1] [1] http://cdixon.org/2013/03/02/what-the-smartest-people-do-on-the-weekend-is-what-everyone-else-will-do-during-the-week-in-ten-years/ http://cdixon.org/2013/03/02/what-the-smartest-people-do-on-...

ChuckMcM 14y ago

So now you have in place all the bits you need for a "members only" netnews feed, someone should go dig up the code and create a 'news' sync'd document. If you played your cards right you could use off the shelf news readers that look into a local repo of the news. With just a tiny bit of crypto code you could add a repudiation feature (keys signed by the secret vs the secret itself) and control access to both individual groups and individual users.

vy8vWJlco 14y ago
Just to make the connection for others, you are describing something that can be used for chat AND binaries. As ugly a hack as it might be, (speaking to the choir, I know) there is tremendous value in simply being able to move messages (in this case, as simple files), between buddies without needing an "account" with a "service" (of the type that motivates people to excessively use "quotes").

cobookman 14y ago

If they allowed us to pick and choose what we want to download from friends shares as well as search our friends shares, this could become an interesting tool. Imagine a private p2p site that you and your friends use. You choose who to share with and what files you can see. Then add links to give to friends so attaching files in emails would be a sinch.

pointernil 14y ago

Is this usable as a backup offsite/distributed store? Put backup into TrueCrypt Container which itself is located in a BT Sync folder. Invite other devices + "partners" to sync that folder ... any thoughts on this usage scenario with BT Sync?

ivanist 14y ago

Does the traffic from this appear same as P2P traffic? I think my company might block my internet access if it finds out that I am doing p2p sharing; and I don't want that to happen.

rdl 14y ago

I don't see why you'd use this instead of AeroFS. AeroFS also has much more useful business features once you grow into needing that.

jjsz 14y ago

This ideological P2P sync will only work if the server you're using it on has the highest chance of staying on. Which is a home server. How can BS connect to ownCloud to push the updated files to avoid an emergency where, you're not a Dropbox member, and your device was stolen and turned off?

XorNot 14y ago

I was in the alpha for this, but didn't use it. The single reason was that they had no solution for "two files modified while offline" at the time. This is just far too likely for me to remain an unaddressed issue. I don't know if it's been improved since then.

jjoergensen 14y ago
A solution could be to give each of your machines their own folder. In this folder they are the source and the only machine allowed to make changes. Other machines can read, but not update.
veidr 14y ago
This is my biggest issue with BS also (having only started testing it today). It is definitely an issue, and it definitely nukes files, apparently permanently with no recourse. I tested it out like this, on two machines (Mac Pro No. 5 and MacBook Pro No. 5, sorry for the confusingly similar names): [mason@MacBook-Pro-No-5 ~]$ cd BTSync/ [mason@MacBook-Pro-No-5 BTSync]$ echo 'Hey man, this is draft one. ' > my_awesome_file.txt Here I waited for it to sync and confirmed the same file was on both machines. Then, in two terminal windows: [mason@Mac-Pro-No-5 BTSync]$ echo 'hello from Mac Pro at remote office' >> my_awesome_file.txt [mason@MacBook-Pro-No-5 BTSync]$ echo 'hello again from local office' >> my_awesome_file.txt I pressed Return as close to simultaneously as I could in each window, with the MacBook Pro No. 5 machine being second. While it sync'd, I just had time to visually confirm that the contents of the two files were as expected, and different from each other. MacBook Pro No. 5's file: Hey man, this is draft one. hello again from local office Mac Pro No. 5's file: Hey man, this is draft one. hello from Mac Pro at remote office A second later, the sync was complete. The file from Mac Pro No. 5 was completely gone, and both machines's my_awesome_file.txt now contained: Hey man, this is draft one. hello again from local office I then looked in the .SyncTrash dir on both machines, to see if the nuked file made it in there, but it did not. Conclusion: Modifying a file on two machines will cause one of the conflicting versions to be annihilated permanently. Furthermore, this can happen nearly instantaneously, making it unlikely that any backup mechanism would be able to preserve the 'losing' version of the file. Thoughts: I think this is a potentially serious problem and I hope they fix it. Still, to me personally, this is probably preferable to my main problems with Dropbox (slow speeds and utterly broken symlink behavior, as discussed elsewhere in this thread). Overall I am still pretty excited about this product.

webwanderings 14y ago

This isn't a Dropbox alternative by any means. From what I could understand, you need to keep two of your machines ON in order to sync. The best it could be called is replacement of your USB drive. AeroFS does something similar and it apparently doesn't require keeping two of your machines On at the same time, though it didn't work for me as advertised, so I gave up on AeroFS. Using Dropbox in the title with this, is misleading.

gcr 14y ago
This was meant to address a specific use case that Dropbox does not. I don't want a central service like Dropbox to host my files. This design decision means that I must keep one or two of my machines on for my files to be available.

shmerl 14y ago

Are there any open source clients for that?

joshaidan 14y ago

What I think will be an interesting use case for this technology is public file sharing. If I want to share files with the general public I could just give them a read-only key and then they'll have a folder that syncs with whatever files I put into it. It's a new way of content distribution. Will this be how people distribute music and TV shows? Will this be the way people subscribe to content in the future? I could be a game developer, and I could give my users a read-only key to download my game and at the same time they'll receive any updates I make to the game when I update the files in the folder.

twoodfin 14y ago
This is indeed a great technology. The "push" analog to the original BitTorrent's "pull". But there's also potential for abuse (or greater freedom depending on how you look at it!). Say I create a sync folder containing a bunch of popular films and then widely distribute the read-only key. Thousands subscribe. Now I have access to what amounts to a botnet that will widely distribute whatever content I see fit to deposit, more or less untraceably because the P2P network is so huge, and I or my co-conspirators can insert or retrieve content from any part of it.
- GhotiFish 14y ago
  That sounds like a brilliant thing for free speech, but watch out, I'm not sure there's a guarantee of anonymity in crowds for people who have read-write access, they may be identifiable. Still reading the analysis of the system. Have to read through the spec.
  - twoodfin 14y ago
    What are you reading that has the details? It would seem to me that read-only peers would have to have the ability to propagate writes across the network. Why would they have to identify the origin of the change if they obviously have cryptographically secure evidence that the change is valid?

tomkinstinch 14y ago

This seems like a great way to deploy code and files to thousands of servers. Anyone here already using BitTorrent for deployment?

ominous_prime 14y ago
Many years ago, I used BT to distribute multi-GB files across some clusters. Anecdotally, it worked great! Didn't need to do it again though, so I never cleaned up or documented the process.
nthitz 14y ago
TorrentFreak had a few articles about Twitter and FB using BitTorrent for deployment http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-makes-twitters-server-deployment-75-faster-100716/ http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-makes-twitters-server-dep... http://torrentfreak.com/facebook-uses-bittorrent-and-they-love-it-100625/ http://torrentfreak.com/facebook-uses-bittorrent-and-they-lo... More recently Ars wrote about it as well http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/04/exclusive-a-behind-the-scenes-look-at-facebook-release-engineering/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/04/exclusive-a-behind-t...

stephengillie 14y ago

So this will run on RasPi? It seems like the next step is for someone to attach a NAS to a RasPi and make a "syncbox" -- a NAS which auto-syncs to the other NASes you've configured across the internet. For end users, they would get 2 and share a secret between them, then install one at 2 separate offices (or home and office), and any files dumped onto one NAS are replicated to the other. Basically Dropbox without file limits.

sehugg 14y ago
There's a Linux ARM binary, so ... maybe?
te_chris 14y ago
Would totally buy something like that that worked out of the box.
- urza 14y ago
  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transporterguy/transporter-a-new-way-to-share-access-and-protect http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transporterguy/transport...
  - dombili 14y ago
    Works globally, only ships within the US. That's awesome.
    - stephengillie 14y ago
      Looking at this, it looks like a 1-stop sharing solution. Im assuming that when a user shares files from this device, the connection is routed from Transporter's servers to the users device, allowing the downloader to directly copy the users file. I wonder how replication between 2 devices would work...
      - bluefinity 14y ago

thisisrobv 14y ago

The "Dropbox Alternative" marketing line seems to really be what's confusing people... this is not Dropbox. You have to have a source always online, there's no third party service sitting in the cloud syncing all of your computers, it passes that responsibilty onto the user. That said, I'm surprised they aren't trying to "consumerize" this into a hardware product. Space Monkey has seen a ton of success recently and are well beyond their funding goal on Kickstarter(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clintgc/space-monkey-taking-the-cloud-out-of-the-datacente http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clintgc/space-monkey-tak...). The thing that immediately came to mind for me is that this is really a job for Bittorrent. A NAS device makes complete sense and if they could build a better experience around that, similar to what Space Monkey is doing, seems like a huge opportunity.

Xanza 14y ago

Honestly, I really don't think BTSync should be compared to dropbox, it sends the wrong message. When people say 'dropbox alternative' people immediately think "Oh cool, so it can do everything dropbox can do?" Which we all know isn't the case here. The best thing about BTSync is it's basically zero configuration. I have it running on 10 of my boxes so far, and it's working amazingly. Far better than dropbox -- however, I only need it to sync files between hardware, not for anything else, like photo sharing, or advanced configuration based sharing. I just want file A, to be on all configured servers. TL;DR: Don't compare BTSync to Dropbox, it's not a dropbox alternative. It's something completely different, entirely.

alyandon 14y ago

Dropbox is the only cloud sync client that I've found so far that has decent support for hosting TrueCrypt containers. It's unfortunate that my particular use case is so narrow because I can't really consider something to be a dropbox replacement unless it: 1) has a fully supported client on Windows, OS X and Linux 2) has that capability to sync with mobile devices 3) uses the native file system apis available on each platform to avoid doing scans on large numbers of files looking for changes by the last modified timestamp (so I don't have to disable the TrueCrypt feature that avoids updating the timestamp on containers) 4) transmits only the changed content of the file instead of the entire file (so I don't have to transmit the entire TrueCrypt container when only some blocks in the container have been modified) Has anyone ran across a service that would allow me to utilize TrueCrypt volumes as easily as DropBox does across the major desktop operating systems?

gcr 14y ago

This is really great. I like how on Linux, you can have it run from either a web interface or a (quite simple) .json config file.

fastball 14y ago

> Those in the closed Alpha have already synced more than 200TB since we started the program,” BitTorrent announces. Umm, how do they know this if the sync is secure and only peer-to-peer?

evoltix 14y ago
Good point. Not sure if this has anything to do with it but by default, "Use relay server when required" is checked for each folder you share. But I would hope that it doesn't go through a relay server all the time.
Mindless2112 14y ago
Transfers being peer-to-peer doesn't prevent them from collecting statistics in the client.

Angostura 14y ago

Is this the first time that a product has been launched with the primary motivation of showing that a particular protocol is good for things other illegal filesharing? Up until now BitTorrent aficionados have tended to be forced back to the "I use it for Linux distros" when defending the protocol against ISPs and businesses looking to shape or block BT traffic. If this takes off, then the "its only used for nefarious purposes" argument will be much harder to make. I suspect that this is the real reason it's being launched - not that that's a bad thing.

ephoz 14y ago
Many gamers are using BitTorrent through Valve's Steam. By which I mean, that p2p file sharing is hardly nefarious. It's just a clever use of bandwidth.
- javanix 14y ago
  Is Steam actually using BitTorrent? I thought they were using something proprietary. If they are not using BitTorrent then Sync would provide a new, plausible way to stop ISPs from blocking that specific protocol.
  - ephoz 14y ago
    I think I got a little ahead of myself here, sorry. Bram Cohen (who is known for inventing BitTorrent) has worked shortly with Valve on Steam. I can't find a source quoting Steam as using BitTorrent though, so let's assume that no. Well, apparently Blizzard does. :) Quoting http://www.wowpedia.org/Blizzard_Downloader http://www.wowpedia.org/Blizzard_Downloader
  - pm90 14y ago
    I remember that Ubuntu used to be available via torrents
    - e12e 14y ago
      Still is? http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/alternative-downloads http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/alternative-downloads There's also http://debtorrent.alioth.debian.org/ http://debtorrent.alioth.debian.org/ Apparently CCP is planning to use bittorrent for the next generation launcher for EVE online: http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/74573 http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/74573

brent_noorda 14y ago

Oh Happy Day! Now all our family members can once again share many many gigabytes of family photos and movies. (I have so missed FolderShare!)

siculars 14y ago

I love everything about this. This is like a dark encrypted p2p network. Looking forward to setting up family music sharing folders.

rijoja 14y ago

what's really nice is how it works across modems and routers. I can't listen to my modems port in a classical sense, so a webserver wouldn't work. But this connects easily with my VPN! Which is fantastic. Setting this up manually would've been really hard work.

api 14y ago

And the wheel turns: http://www.retrologic.com/jargon/W/wheel-of-reincarnation.html http://www.retrologic.com/jargon/W/wheel-of-reincarnation.ht... The wheel of reincarnation I'm referring to in this case is the cycling between a mainframe/thin-client architecture and a PC-based distributed architecture. In ye olde days it was mainframes and dumb terminals. Then it was PCs and LANs/the Internet. Then it was web browsers and tablets (dumb terminal 2.0) and The Cloud (mainframe 2.0). Now the wheel is turning once again... The cloud is great as long as I don't care who owns my data, want to pay constantly for hosting it (or put up with arbitrary and changeable limits), have no privacy, lose my data when a startup goes out of business, etc.

pm90 14y ago
Indeed. It seems fortunate that this got released a few days after CISPA was passed.
tunesmith 14y ago
Isn't the ideal kinda both/neither? Get a "dumb" laptop with plenty of horsepower/space, sign in to something and sync everything over (chef/puppet/btsync/dropbox), do a bunch of work locally, then wipe the laptop. I'd love to have my whole laptop identity work that way. It's sort of possible now but it takes forever to convert all your data and apps over to that approach.
- burrows 14y ago
  You might like http://projectmeadow.com http://projectmeadow.com

jjoergensen 14y ago

Does anyone have experience with http://www.symform.com http://www.symform.com?

evoltix 14y ago

I wonder how this will affect Space Monkey. Thoughts?

malbs 14y ago

So I just set this up on my home machine and a work machine.. I got caught out with the pre-defined host config because I didn't realise I needed to allow both tcp AND udp through the firewall, so my work machine was unable to access my privately shared folder on the home machine (tracker server/relay server/dht options all disabled) Once that was sorted, I have a perfectly good replication system working amonst all my machines, just like dropbox, without the centralised control, this is awesome

tlrobinson 14y ago

Ok, now make it totally decentralized and peer-to-peer, with a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin used to automatically pay peers that replicate your data on an ongoing basis. There are lots of hard problems to be solved in such a system (mostly dealing with the lack of trust), but I think it would be totally badass.

lizzard 14y ago

This is fantastic. It's easy to set up and use. I can share folders without having to rearrange anything. I love that you don't have to make an account. Awesome for privacy!!

overgard 14y ago

I'm sort of amused at all the dropbox comparisons. This solves a totally different problem which dropbox was HORRIBLE at, which is sharing music/movie collections across my machines at home. I'll still probably use dropbox for documents and stuff, but frankly I never wanted to put my music and tv shows into dropbox because it would have taken up most of my space very quickly for the dubious "feature" of uploading all my pirated stuff to a centralized location. Yay. No way. Sidenote, but, if Dropbox people happen to be reading this, maybe this will be a hint: PLEASE ADD MULTIFOLDER SUPPORT. (As in, multiple roots). I know you're trying to go for a simple aesthetic etc. etc., so you only have "one" dropbox, but BTSync makes doing that trivially easy. You have no excuse.

pixelcort 14y ago

Very cool; this seems to sync symlinks as-is, without traversing into whatever they're pointing at.

Down_n_Out 14y ago

I think this is very promising, as a business owner I have a desktop in the office and a laptop for the road, it makes for a secure way to sync the "customer-folders" between both PC's and saves me from getting my laptop out because there's a file on there that isn't yet on the desktop ... While Dropbox is a good tool, I'd be more at ease the files are transfered securely/encrypted... And not resting on some cloud server, call it paranoid or whatever you want... Yes, I could use Truecrypt or whatever, but this has the "approachability" factor in its favor ... And no I'm not saying Truecrypt is difficult, I'm speaking more in general... I will probably test this out.

_pmf_ 14y ago

> "Another advantage is that there are no storage or transfer limits, so users can sync as many files as they want, for free." Yes, I believe that, because that's a completely solid business model for them.

nwh 14y ago
Well they're not paying for storage or transfer; why does it have an impact on the company?
- _pmf_ 14y ago
  Apparently, I'm stupid. But then the claim that the speed is comparable to Dropbox is fishy.
  - nwh 14y ago
    The reliability would probably suffer somewhat. I doubt I could use it at a lot of places that filter traditional p2p traffic.

ivanb 14y ago

This can be a good tool for a game dev studio where there are gigabytes of artwork that needs to be shared between multiple departments.

skeletonjelly 14y ago

Surprised nobody has mentioned Wuala. It was doing this in 2008. Just never got traction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuala

aychedee 14y ago

This is much more interesting than Dropbox... http://www.aychedee.com/2013/04/24/dead-drop-with-bittorrent-sync/ http://www.aychedee.com/2013/04/24/dead-drop-with-bittorrent...

manish_gill 14y ago

Can anyone break down the security for me? Are they using PGP? How does the shared secret thing work?

dmatlack 14y ago
It uses AES (symmetric key cryptography) with a 256 bit key (which they refer to as a 32-character "secret").

tobeportable 14y ago

Best [vps-cloud_storage] setup to get "cloud syncing" ?

tobeportable 14y ago
Contabo : VPS with 200GB @ 10 EUR / month : http://contabo.com/?show=vps http://contabo.com/?show=vps
tobeportable 13y ago
backupsify : 500GB @ 7$/month atm

brownbat 14y ago

I see Dropbox mostly as a tool to send large files between computers that aren't both on at the same time: http://xkcd.com/949/ http://xkcd.com/949/ It'd be nice to do that without an escrow, but I'm not sure that's really possible (without steep obligations on members as to hosting capacity and uptime).

visarga 14y ago

Instead of private (darknet) bittorrenting I'd rather have a solution for all those files with few seeders who are half dead, in the cloud. It's easy to torrent the latest episode. Everyone is in on that. But what about the long tail? We need a different scheme there. My idea would be to lump together all the files in a huge torrent. That would inevitably attract many peers, so the problem would be solved if users did selective downloading, as the whole would be too large for any one of them. The system would need to use some disk space and bandwidth from each peer to host some shards of the whole. Not all the data in the mega-torrent would be downloaded, just some sensible section of it, like, say, 5GB. Between 1000 users, we could have 1TB of files. With a million, we could have a huge library. This way we could have enough seeds for any part of the whole. Of course, it would need a way to add new stuff on the fly and balance the replicas. tl;dr - I'd rather have a solution for rare torrents. I'm worried for all the content that is not "hot enough". We could amass a huge library of rare stuff, in time.

pixelcort 14y ago
There are other P2P networks that can give you files based on a hash of their content, for example ED2K and Kademlia. I think even Gnutella supports hash-based retrieval. BitTorrent clients now have distributed hash tables accessible; it would be nice if magnet URLs could just point to a hash of the file, instead of to a specific torrent. Bonus: Even ED2K links point to a tree of hashes, so you can verify the data while it is being downloaded.

joeblau 14y ago

Finally! I was trying to get something like this made 6-7 years ago for distributing CRL's. I'm glad to see it's up and running, now all I need is a buddy to test this out with. edit: The UX needs a bit of polishing. I don't think my Mom is going to be able to figure this out.

vy8vWJlco 13y ago

One of the comments on the TorrentFreak article compares BTSync to FTP. In one sense, that is not an accurate comparison at all. And yet, it has enormous potential to fill a similar role. The secret/passphrase amounts simply to a globally-addressable identifier to a set of folders that just happen to sync. It will be trivial to script a loop to watch a control file in a folder to enable automatic FTP-like transfers between my friends. Even without keeping the "secret" secret, instead simply treating it as public but discardable, you have something that can rival (and is a faster-moving target than) file lockers like Mega and Rapidshare (300 TB do not need to be re-uploaded in order to change the secret/address). The sad thing is that NAT and firewalls have starved the Internet to the point that that simple property (global addressing) seems almost miraculous. (And that is why IPv6 - or something permitting global addressability, instead of carrier-grade NAT - is so important going forward.)

nano111 13y ago

Can you mark one of the node as untrusted and keep the data encrypted for them?