Generally speaking, the only people who shy from Dropbox or Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) Drive are those with a dial-up connection or something to hide. Cloud storage, for those people, is not somewhere that they wish to share their data and files.
The ugly word, especially if you work for those responsible for safeguarding music, television or film revenues and royalties, for years has been “torrent.” In this case however, “torrent” is not a dirty word at all but rather an option for file sharing rather than piracy. Yes, it can do this as well.
Based in San Francisco, Bit Torrent is going into its eighth year as a legitimate file sharing entity. BitTorrent itself is a legal company that makes money by licensing its technology and brands to business customers, though as mentioned, it gets a bad rap in computing circles and Congress.
If quick and private is what you’re looking for, Bit Torrent Sync which has just been released to the public might be the best option available.
“Since Sync is based on P2P [peer-to-peer technology] and doesn’t require a pit-stop in the cloud, you can transfer files at the maximum speed supported by your network,” it said.
“Your information is never stored on a server in the cloud; your data is protected by encrypted keys. Your files belong to you, and stay on the devices of your choice.”
Bit Torrent Sync is not yet able to only sync recent changes but rather notices a changed file and rewrites it in its entirety. While this is less efficient than say, Dropbox, BitTorrent has said that it will be introducing “differential sync” later in the year.
“One of the reasons why Dropbox and Google Drive use central servers as middle-men between your devices is that the server plays an important role in ensuring the most recent version of the document gets pushed to each device and doesn’t overwrite more recent updates,” said Davies Murphy Group’s Chris Green
“When you are working on a straight device-to-device, peer-to-peer method like this, it’s a lot harder to ensure that safety net,” he continued.
“However, there’s obvious appeal for some people who like the idea of not being beholden or reliant on a third-party who may have technical problems or go bust taking all their data with them,” he concluded.
Don’t expect businesses to immediately adopt the new technology but for those engaged in larger file sharing practices, this new technology will present a viable option in the near future.
