Seb

Ok, thank you for your answer! Just out of curiosity: Could a file transfer between two points be boosted by relying on multiple relays and triggering parallel uploads of file chunks or is the expected gain marginal - and if so why?

I wanted to understand if in a one to one scenario (file transfer from A to B one could expect a higher transfer speed when using the bitTorrent protocol (not specifically bitTorrentsync) as compared to, for instance, ftp. I can understand that when the same file is shared by many online people then it can efficiently be downloaded by another peer as many peers will simulatenously upload different chunks. However in a one to one scenario I do not see the added benefit unless other peers not sharing / downloading the file act as relays to enable different physical routes from A to B (not sure that would really boost speed in practice). Is there such a mechanism and can we expect a real boost from it, or is there actually no real speed benefit in using bitTorrent as compared to ftp in such one to one scenario?

When sharing a folder with a SINGLE other peer: Do the file chunks also transit to other peers of the network not syncing the folder (even if they do not see them)? This could open the number of routes in a sort of diverging-converging tree and possibly increase the overall bandwidth (provided that the ISPs of the source and destination are not bottlenecks). The strength of BitTorrent is to have multiple peers simultaneously sharing the same file but for a 1 to 1 scenario (still the largest application case) there is no real benefit. Comparing cloud storage bandwidth vs file transfers of 2 peers within the same 1 Gb LAN is pointless... you share folders over the network and use whatever incremental backup software and you get it. Don't get me wrong, I like the app and it is pretty convenient, just trying to understand how it works and how different it is from other solutions.