They mention in the "The Tech" section that they're doing a VPN between the "Plug" and clients and that they've gotten it to punch thru "any main NAT & firewall we tested" and further say "it's decentralized when possible" but don't go into any more specifics. I'd like to know what their mechanism is for resolving the Plug's public IP address. Presumably they'll be running some dynamic DNS servers or some proprietary location protocol but since they make a point of saying they're not a subscription service I am immediately dubious as to how they plan to continue to finance running those servers.
This entire class of products just makes me sad. It would be really neat to live in a world where the bandwidth (and lack of transfer quotas) actually existed that would permit us to take advantage of the exceedingly cheap large storage devices that we can purchase and put on our home and business networks. I don't see that world existing any time soon, at least in the United States.
I'm guessing they're running a reverse SSH tunnel through their own servers which your devices then connect to to get to your hard drive. Probably connecting to a common port such as 80 or 443 to avoid any issues with firewalls.
That's what I was thinking. The only issue is accessing PogoPlug as a file system. I had to access it as root and create a Samba share, but it's not very reliable. I have one of the older PogoPlugs (pink).
Me too! I ran into the same sort limitations, eventually hacked it into some sort of linux server. I've probably still got the pink guy at the bottom of some junk box somewhere.
If it's true that they've gotten it to punch thru any main NAT & firewall they've tested it's already ahead of Bitcasa, who STILL hasn't added proxy settings to their client.
The Kickstarter blurb (and rewards options) talk about using multiple Plug devices to store redundant and off-site copies.
"You can install one Plug in your home and one in your office, for example. Your Plugs will automatically work together to replicate your content. Two Plugs are enough. But with each Plug you buy, your data gets more secure and also faster to access. If some of your friends have Plug, you can also ask your Plugs to back up each other's content. Your data is encrypted, so your friends will not be able to read it."
Like much of their Kickstarter copy - for me that's enough to make me interested, but not quite enough to explain to me what's actually going on. (Having said that, it's probably _fabulous_ marketing copy - I'm _very_ close to plunking down a $129 pledge to get a pair of them…)
I didn't see anything about them having their own servers, but they do mention you can use something like BitCasa or Carbonite along side Plug, which run about $5/month for unlimited backups.
The computer with the USB devices connected is the "Plug" itself. It's just a tiny embedded server w/ a USB device port on one end and wired Ethernet on the other.
They mention in the "The Tech" section that they're doing a VPN between the "Plug" and clients and that they've gotten it to punch thru "any main NAT & firewall we tested" and further say "it's decentralized when possible" but don't go into any more specifics. I'd like to know what their mechanism is for resolving the Plug's public IP address. Presumably they'll be running some dynamic DNS servers or some proprietary location protocol but since they make a point of saying they're not a subscription service I am immediately dubious as to how they plan to continue to finance running those servers.
This entire class of products just makes me sad. It would be really neat to live in a world where the bandwidth (and lack of transfer quotas) actually existed that would permit us to take advantage of the exceedingly cheap large storage devices that we can purchase and put on our home and business networks. I don't see that world existing any time soon, at least in the United States.