
BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That - leonegresima
http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2013/05/27/bittorrent-sync-is-a-dropbox-killer-or-maybe-much-more-than-that/
======
acabal
I looked at BTSync the other day when researching self-hosted Dropbox
alternatives. It looks like a great product and so far beats the pants off the
closest competitor, Seafile, for ease of install and use. I was really
impressed.

But unfortunately it's not open source, so it comes down to an issue of trust
--which, in the end, is the same issue with Dropbox and really the entire
point of moving to self-hosted for me.

Do you trust BitTorrent to properly encrypt your data as they promise? To not
send it to someone else on the sly? Etc. etc. I acknowledge the possibility of
funny business is remote at best but it's one of those "on principle" things
for me.

(Yes you could use another layer like Encfs or something before putting it in
your BTSync/Dropbox folder but that's a pain and not really the point.)

~~~
johne20
Did you ever evaluate <http://owncloud.org/> ? I have never used it, but
looked at briefly awhile back and it is open source.

~~~
da_n
From almost everyone I've heard that's tried it it's unfortunately extremely
buggy.

~~~
ekianjo
Same here, did not hear very good things about it.

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ronnier
I'd say it could be troubling for dropbox. It's probably game over for
<https://aerofs.com> though unless AeroFS drastically changes/pivots.

For dropbox, they do have some advantages. Bittorrent brings up thoughts of
piracy. Dropbox doesn't have that reputation and would be much more acceptable
in corporate environments. Additionally, Dropbox has integration with a lot of
apps and I don't see that happening with BT Sync anytime soon. Web access to
your files, versioning, etc.

Advantages of BTSync? Free. No limits. Files not stored on 3rd party servers.
It's fast. Transferring large files with Dropbox is painful. BTSync is just
getting started.

~~~
keiferski
1\. A service with the word "torrent" in it will never be adopted by a
corporate entity. (edit: "typical" corporation. Technology companies don't
count)

2\. You may be overestimating how much the average person cares about file
storage size, 3rd party servers, or transferring large files.

~~~
KaiserPro
If I was aspera or filesociety, I'd be rather worried.

I'm planning on using this to sync terrorbytes between london and LA. Why
should I pay the ridiculous cost of a thinly wrapped rsync over UDP when I can
have it for free? (the latency between the two means that the maximum
throughput on tcp based protocols get about 2-3 megs a second tops)

I will be testing the throughput of torrentsync. Currently it appears to be
painfully single threaded (it looks to be python)

~~~
mwfunk
You must have a frightening amount of data!

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aganek
I consider "sync" to only be a feature of Dropbox. Its the absolute best way
to get files into their cloud storage platform (as compared to something like
uploading files manually via a web portal).

But I think the value of Dropbox is in their cloud storage platform itself. It
is the platform that is responsible for integration into a bevy of mobile
apps, backup, and many other useful tools.

In my opinion, BitTorrent is a feature that doesn't offer the value of a
platform. This feature is super awesome for a select use-case (maybe moving my
media library across all of my home devices), but its no Dropbox killer. Its
not a full platform at its current state.

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AndrewDucker
It has a massive problem which Dropbox solves: the need for both computers to
be on at the same time.

I have a laptop. I have a desktop. They are almost never on at the same time.
With Dropbox this is _fine_ - the files go from one to the cloud, and then to
the other when it's turned on.

With BTSync, this would mean that my files would never sync.

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

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

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

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induscreep
1\. BT Sync needs to be open sourced and their security practices need to be
peer reivewed

2\. No version control in BT Sync like Dropbox has - killer feature in Dropbox
IMHO

~~~
adambard
Why does Sync deserve a security audit and Dropbox not? If anything I'd say
Dropbox is the more risky, what with storing all your files on their own
servers.

~~~
StavrosK
Because Dropbox is clearly untrustworthy, there's no need to audit it. BTSync
is potentially trustworthy.

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balanceiskey15
How does this article share both of these statements?:

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

"Maybe Sync is not an out-and-out DropBox killer, but it does look likely to
broaden the scope of what we understand by file storage and change what
customers expect from file storage services"

So is it, or isn't it?

Praise to the BitTorrent folks in any event. I've been using Sync for a few
weeks now and I've been pleased with its performance thus far. I'm debating
whether I want to shut off Dropbox, but Dropbox still has several great
features, versioning in particular.

~~~
senorprogrammer
The article's author cleverly avoids the shame of Betteridge's Law by simply
leaving off the question mark, but alas the result is the same. And in that
you find your answer.

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

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

I assumed that was the meaning behind the statement you selected.

~~~
sp332
That's true, but there is a special case if both computers are on the same
LAN, the Dropbox client software will sync locally which is much faster.

~~~
pixelcort
Nope, even on LAN you have to wait until the file is on the server before the
direct transfer starts.

~~~
sp332
Huh, never realized. Thanks for the info.

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schneitj
I wish they made this available as a backend for applications for state
syncing. (Both mobile & desktop)

I always have desktop running somewhere that can be doing the more intensive
backend processing.

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

~~~
hemancuso
You can mount dropbox and a whole bunch of other cloud services as a
filesystem using ExpanDrive - google drive and box support coming next

www.expandrive.com

(I am the author)

~~~
pdx
I use a competitor of yours called WebDrive.

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

~~~
hemancuso
I think it is an all around better product. No need to tweak settings to make
it work. It's generally faster, licenses are cross platform, we support more
protocols. It's less expensive. We care :)

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Negitivefrags
So I understand that data transfer is not done via online services, but can
BitTorrent Sync be used entirely locally?

For example, I have a desktop at home, one at work, and my laptop.

I would love to have my music collection available all the time on my work
desktop, but I don't want to waste the bandwidth at the office.

My ideal use case would be that while I am at home, my laptop and home desktop
sync across the LAN, when I get to work, my laptop and office desktop sync.

Does BitTorrent Sync allow that?

~~~
gcr
You want to control the topology of your own network? Not really.

BitTorrent Sync allows for LAN syncing, yes. When a direct connection between
hosts is not possible, it will use a third-party server as first a matchmaking
server for NAT hole punching. If that fails, it will route all sync traffic
through the third party server acting as a relay. (These third parties are
controlled by the BitTorrent Sync developers)

You may need to have some way of killing the btsync daemon on your home
machine if you want to sync directly from your laptop to your office machine.

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

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

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artagnon
Any clue why their previous undertaking, btapp.js, disappeared into oblivion?
Aren't the apps listed on <http://torque.bittorrent.com/labs/> incredibly
useful? (They forgot about Linux, so I didn't even have a chance to run these
things)

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goronbjorn
BitTorrent has orders of magnitude more potential for the enterprise use case
than for the consumer use case.

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Paul12345534
I would love to see something like this that allows you to serve a website on
localhost to specific people. The browser control could be embedded so you
could control how resources are loaded (through torrent instead of normal
URL).

~~~
evilduck
$ cd /home/somedir $ python -m SimpleHTTPServer

You'd still have to open up ports on any firewall you're running, and there's
no user access control, but it's a quick way to serve up a directory over a
LAN.

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tobeportable
imho there are only two killers out there btsync & seafile.

\- btsync has the ease of use that seafile doens't have

\- seafile has optional file versionning that btsync doesn't have

~~~
zzzmarcus
Checkout AeroFS, it's P2P, it can do versioning with the team server and has a
pretty nice UI.

~~~
tobeportable
java signup magic ? i don't know man

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mtgx
Can this be used as a plugin-free Bittorent Sync alternative?

<https://github.com/peer5/sharefest>

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jongraehl
Until there's a longer security+correctness track record (and maybe not even
then), it's too soon to rely on this closed-source software -
<http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/18434-source-code/>

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skierscott
I've looked around for a mobile Bittorrent Sync app, but haven't found one. If
they did have one, that would make me switch for sure.

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tunesmith
BTSync won't be a Dropbox killer until it has unlimited version history.

~~~
Joyfield
My guess is that it will be as a plugin.

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kmasters
Although this may be a little blunt, I don't see how a company that caters to
media theft is going to compete with Dropbox. Although Dropbox intentionally
lets people register many accounts to they can do more or less the same thing.
(Ever know someone with 20 dropbox accounts?)

This is the 800 lb gorilla in the cloud storage room. Providers like Dropbox,
Box, SkyDrive, GDrive dont want to be cast in the light of Megaupload or
BitTorrent, lest their business come under scrutiny. Hence they keep their
data caps fairly low so you can't store a DVD on their service.

I dont use torrent software because Im not interesting in illegal content. I
dont think regardless of their traffic stats BTSync is going to matter much to
mainstream users.

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mindstab
I pay for dropbox for dedicated storage. it will be there. How long until the
first stories of people not being able to get their files back out of BT Sync.
Also they don't talk about the hidden cost, that I assume you have to use a
lot more of your HD to store other people's stuff and a load of your
bandwidth.

Remember this system works by using all the clients as the server farm. And
for that kind of system you need more redundancy than normal, so you're
probably paying many X gb in harddrive space what you are storing on it. Want
to store 10gb on it? got 30 or 40gb to spare? if not, stick with trusty
reliable no hidden costs dropbox

~~~
james33
You shouldn't make ridiculous claims like that without knowing the facts. That
isn't how BT Sync works at all, have you even tried it?

