BitTorrent Unveils Sync 2.0 60
An anonymous reader writes BitTorrent today outlined the company's plans for its file synchronization tool Sync. Next year, the company will launch Sync 2.0, finally taking the product out of beta, as well as three new paid Sync products. Ever since its debut, Sync has provided a wide variety of solutions to various problems, BitTorrent says, from distributing files across remote servers to sharing vacation photos. BitTorrent thus believes it needs to build three distinct products for each of these separate audiences, including a Pro version for $40 per year.
Vacation photos (Score:1)
Is "distributing files across remote servers to sharing vacation photos" the new "and it can access Daily Stock Quotes!".
I swear I saw that on the box my Commodore 128 came in.
Basically (Score:4, Funny)
Fuck the cloud, long live the private puddle!
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Yes, I think it's better than trusting everything to someone else's server. This gives you the option to sync using your own hardware. I wonder if you need static IPs though.
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You don't need static IPs.
Re:Basically (Score:4, Informative)
Not quite the same as BitTorrent Sync, but I have used owncloud [owncloud.org] for a while, as I prefer data to be on my infrastructure where possible. It was easy to set up, although was too slow on a Raspberry Pi to be useable, and I have not had much luck using the default sqlite. Now on a Debian VM with MySQL, and it's running just fine.
I would not make it publicly accessible, though, as it's just not worth the risk to me, so it only syncs when I am travelling after I have connected to the VPN. However, if you didn't have a static IP, a dynamic DNS service should do the job just fine of making it easily addressable externally.
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Not much of a "cloud" if it doesn't support clustering.
7.0.2 does support clustering - in theory. In practice, I've only got one device worth using as a server, so I haven't personally tested it out...but clustering is in its entry stages.
I will say though that OwnCloud is better at syncing phone-> server than BT Sync, as well as sharing files (just give 'em a URL). OwnCloud's shortcoming, at this time, is dealing with large quantities of files. It seems to throw up rather spectacularly if you're syncing a folder with north of 10,000 files, while BT Sync see
Peer discovery (Score:4, Interesting)
BitTorrent operate global discovery servers and the synced directories can also use DHT if enabled, both of which mean that static IPs are not required. Syncs can also be operated without either of these - they can use LAN discovery and a list of static hosts.
Sharing vacation photos (Score:3)
Well, they are in bikinis, at first.
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lol I didn't realize sharing vacation photos was such a problem that BT had to come up with a solution better than FB, Picasa etc.
But then I'm guessing if you were there in person while they made the announcement, you would've seen a "wink wink" after mention of vacation photos.
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lol I didn't realize sharing vacation photos was such a problem that BT had to come up with a solution better than FB, Picasa etc.
Oh it is. But don't worry BitSync has almost made it difficult enough that we no longer need to put up with boring selfies at the Eiffel Tower.
EFSS (Score:1)
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Only 30 dollar signs, is IBM running an early Black Friday sale?
subscription?! (Score:1)
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The service rotates around features available (read the article) plus support. Do you expect free support if you are a company? Do you expect them to provide everything for free?
I can't speak for the GP, but I do agree with him to a significant extent. Allow me to elaborate...
Dropbox/GDrive/1Drive charges a subscription to keep devices synchronized, as well as a slice of storage space in their datacenter. They pay for bandwidth and hard drives, and forward a chunk of that cost to me. This makes perfect sense. Their advantages are that they are keeping a copy of your data on their hard disks (in the event of a catastrophic failure on your end) and the fact that they don't require al
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Are there any mature open source projects that are trying to make personal cloud storage?
I suspect it depends on what "mature" means to you, but owncloud [owncloud.org] has been around for a little while now, and seems to be updated reasonably regularly. LDAP integration is beta, so it might not be suited to a corporate environment but, for home use, it has been fine for a while (2? 3? years now.)
There is a plug-in for it, which allows you to encrypt the files at rest within the server, but this did not work so well for me, as it never seemed to finish — I don't think I have a big archive, as it is o
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So there's no torrent then providing a pseudo cloud across many users' devices which would maintain the file? It's not like Freenet or other distributed storage p2p solutions? Ie it's not like bittorrent at all?
No, they're just pointing out that if you want to use it as a "private cloud" to sync your own files between your own devices you need a seed. Let's for example say you have a cell phone, a tablet and a laptop and they're on and off at different times then BT Sync only works when several of them are online and depending on setup, I wouldn't want my cell phone to try pulling down everything on my laptop. Not like iCloud or whatever where your cell phone can upload photos to "the cloud" while your tablet and
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That said, the functionality that I've been hoping for pretty much since I heard about Bittorrent Sync is the ability to use this as a sort of distributed file system with a desired level of redundancy. So, for example, it be great if I could buy a bunch of consumer-level NAS devices with a few terabytes each, stash them in various places (friends and family's houses, wherever), and say, "I want every unit of information to be stored on at least 4 of the devices". Not necessarily 4, but however redundant
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Re:FOSS solution available (Score:4, Informative)
In fact SyncThing has recently de-merged with Pulse and is now back on it's own (see https://discourse.syncthing.ne... [syncthing.net]). Probably a good thing because Pulse is part of ind.ie (https://ind.ie/about/) which is a little too off-beat, even for me.
That being said, there's also Git-Annex Assistant (many people - on HN - swear by it, but I can never get it to work), Syncany, Filement, Sparkleshare - all decent sync solutions - though I think all lack the encryption & simple setup of BTSync.
I always end up with Unison + SSH.
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Yeah you're right - BTSync is the easiest to setup and if I hadn't worked out how to use Unison many years ago I'd probably be using it now.
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> if your software product confuses someone with almost 20 years of experience in computing, you're doing it wrong
Speaking of which... Software developer with over 20 years of experience here... I tried to figure out iTunes WTF?! How can they make something so confusing? I just wanted to take 10 mp3s and put them on my daughters iphone. "If you continue I will erase everything on the iphone"...?!?! nope nope nope nope...
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Nice, but... do they have an Android app too?
Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
Yay, finally I can stop enjoying the 100GB of free cloud storage that Google provide me, and instead pay $40 / year for no storage at all and the need to provide my own servers :D
I suppose there'll be a free version for people who don't need the "support". I'm just wondering who the pro version is targeted at.
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Does IT know you're running bittorrent code on their network?
Couldn't they just set you up with an FTP site?
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Yes, IT is fully aware, and they even set it up for me after I requested permission and pitched BitTorrent Sync's merits. My role has me working with anywhere from 20 to 60 external vendors at a time and transferring massive files that are stored on the network, and that's not something I could sneak by IT. ;) Besides, I respect IT enormously, and I vet absolutely everything involving network security and resource considerations by them before I do anything.
I also have an FTP, but only as a backup. In my
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Yay, most Bittorrent Sync things are still free, only some new features will have a cost (and only some, not all new things will have a cost). Yay, i control my data,and have a cheap hard drive, or even a NAS at home anyway, now that's able to be synced all over. Yay, I don't need to worry about Dropbox or Google rummaging through my data to sell me things.
There are a lot of cool things about Bittorrent Sync. Most of the new things will still be free. Yeah, it may or may not fit what you want, but there a
Untrustworthy (Score:1)
I used to be a big fan of BtSync, but lately the whole project just started to seem a bit too shifty for my taste.
Despite numerous promises, they never published a detailed description of the protocol. It's still unclear how secure a lot of the mechanisms really are.
For instance, how is the search for another share accomplished? Does it expose your hash to others? Are files encrypted in transmission? What information do relays have access to? Who is acting as a relay? Can I unknowingly be acting as a relay
Open it up yet? (Score:2)
Bittorrent Sync is not bittorrent protocol (Score:2)
Just an FYI...
Bittorrent Sync does not use the bittorrent protocol.