BitTorrent Sync

DropBox has become a ubiquitous presence in both the business and personal lives of people around the world. The cloud-based storage service is simple on the surface, but it fundamentally rewrote how we share files and information with our friends, clients, and colleagues. On the surface, BitTorrent Sync may look like a pretty straightforward alternative to DropBox (and its marketing campaign presents itself as a competitor directly), but the nuances behind ho the software works offer some unique wrinkles to the traditional cloud sharing formula. Despite its functional and design similarities to services like DropBox, BitTorrent Sync isn't a cloud-based service at all. Instead, it draws from the same basic principles of the BitTorrent network. Torrenting relies on the "It takes a village" approach to file sharing. Whereas a traditional upload or download relies on the network connection and computing power of a single machine or server to do the heavy lifting, torrents break the files down into component parts and splits the workload between multiple machines. When applied to a business file sharing model, this brings a number of unique advantages. All the information is stored directly on your machine, so you're limited in what you can download or upload only by the size of your personal storage capacity rather than the demands of a subscription plan or cloud server. It's also an especially enticing fit for users who are worried about their privacy. Their information never leaves their private network, and the only machines that have access to it are those given explicit password-protected control. It's an ideal fit for private networks, and its value only increases as the size of your network does, and the nature of the technology means it can scale to any sized network. While the core of the BitTorrent Sync experience was built for computer to computer sharing, developer Resilio understands that more and more individuals and professionals use their computers and phones interchangeably. The mobile app brings most of the features you'll find in BitTorrent Sync and scales them down to work on smaller and more mobile devices. Originally, Sync only worked with your phone when transferring pictures from your camera roll, but the expanded feature set allows for the creation and sharing of a far wider range of application types. Videos, spreadsheets, and a number of other file types can be created and edited freely between your computer or phone and shared at whichever source you need. That means that your phone is less limited by the demands of its comparatively meager storage space. Changes made to files through your phone will automatically be stored on your remote device, so you can stay productive regardless of where you happen to be. The mobile app does require that you have a traditional version of BitTorrent Sync installed on your source device, but installation is a quick and simple process added further versatility through the inclusion of an in-house API.