urza Posted February 7, 2014 Report Share Posted February 7, 2014 Hi all, just wanted to point out to a new open source alternative to BTSync - syncthing This is syncthing, an open BitTorrent Sync alternative. It is currently far from ready for mass consumption, but it is a usable proof of concept and tech demo. https://github.com/calmh/syncthing There are a lot of questions/requests whether BTSync will be opensource. So in meantime this may be alternative for those who find open source important and necessary for security reasons. Accesible open source means possibility of independent security auditing and knowing what the application is really doing. Otherwise it may very well be trojan horse. I hope this will motivate BTSync team to reconsider their position on open sourcing BTSync. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreatMarko Posted February 7, 2014 Report Share Posted February 7, 2014 There are a lot of questions/requests whether BTSync will be opensource. So in meantime this may be alternative for those who find open source important and necessary for security reasons. Although on the syncthing site it does state that "It is currently far from ready for mass consumption, but it is a usable proof of concept and tech demo" ...so I would suggest that open source or not, syncthing is currently far less stable/usable than current builds of BitTorrent Sync! (which as of three months ago has over 1 million active users and had synced over 30 petabytes of data) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dms2013 Posted February 7, 2014 Report Share Posted February 7, 2014 How can they know how many users and how much data that is transferred? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tel Posted February 7, 2014 Report Share Posted February 7, 2014 "has over 1 million active users and had synced over 30 petabytes of data" - how many of those users are still active, and how many of those 30 petabytes of data was files that had to resync because bts randomly deleted entire folders? Maybe the way forward is to deal with the underlying issues with bts rather than pointing out the weaknesses in other syncing programmes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProphetZ Posted February 8, 2014 Report Share Posted February 8, 2014 There's also https://github.com/jewel/clearskieshttps://github.com/jminardi/syncnet is based upon BTSync but expands the funtionality by incorporating it into a decentralized browser. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
urza Posted February 8, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 8, 2014 There's also https://github.com/jewel/clearskieshttps://github.com/jminardi/syncnet is based upon BTSync but expands the funtionality by incorporating it into a decentralized browser.Thanks, didnt know about cealskies. Looks promissing. I hope one of these opensource alternatives will take off. It would be a shame using closed source application like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stassano Posted March 14, 2014 Report Share Posted March 14, 2014 Well good to know for me, it's a bit of a shame really... sync is a very good program with one VERY major flaw. The tracker is blocked in China which basically means I cannot use it all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Firon Posted March 14, 2014 Report Share Posted March 14, 2014 Well, you could still use it by configuring it with known hosts, though that isn't nearly as convenient.Does the DHT not work either? I guess that's probably blocked too... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RomanZ Posted March 14, 2014 Report Share Posted March 14, 2014 Well good to know for me, it's a bit of a shame really... sync is a very good program with one VERY major flaw. The tracker is blocked in China which basically means I cannot use it all. Please take a look at topic below. It looks like for now only the DNS is wrong for the tracker server, while it is still available .http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/24852-btsync-blocked-in-china/?hl=china Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biocoder Posted March 18, 2014 Report Share Posted March 18, 2014 Hi all, I just wanted to point out at the Hive2Hive library project over at GitHub. It is an open-source solution for distributed, P2P-based file synchronization and sharing, written in Java. In addition, it focuses on maximum security and privacy of both users and data.It supports the whole feature set known from similar centralized approaches, such as Dropbox or Google Drive, all packed in a clean, extendable API. I guess it is worth checking out...Website: http://hive2hive.org/GitHub: https://github.com/Hive2Hive/Hive2Hive Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cpbotha Posted March 18, 2014 Report Share Posted March 18, 2014 I just scanned through most of the documentation, and Hive2Hive sure looks promising. I think it's great that you're making a reusable library for this, but what would be really great for the uptake of your code, is a usable client application / demonstrator that does, for normal users, what bittorrent sync does. Is this something that you might be thinking of or perhaps even working on? Hi all, I just wanted to point out at the Hive2Hive library project over at GitHub. It is an open-source solution for distributed, P2P-based file synchronization and sharing, written in Java. In addition, it focuses on maximum security and privacy of both users and data.It supports the whole feature set known from similar centralized approaches, such as Dropbox or Google Drive, all packed in a clean, extendable API. I guess it is worth checking out...Website: http://hive2hive.org/GitHub: https://github.com/Hive2Hive/Hive2Hive Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biocoder Posted March 19, 2014 Report Share Posted March 19, 2014 Hi cpbotha, hope you're fine Thanks for your feedback! What you said is indeed true. It would be nice to have a little demonstration application. We thought about implementing a password synchronization manager. But we did not achieve that by now as we are highly engaged with the library itself. But still, it is on our TODO list and maybe someone else has another interesting idea. Furthermore, in the open issues on GitHub we enlisted some ideas for applications and also further features. :-) Best regards! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc321 Posted September 7, 2014 Report Share Posted September 7, 2014 Thank you everyone for listing these! I am an open-souce lover and, although I'm not overall unhappy with BTSync (except by the fact that it does not implement a Windows Service, as required extensively in the forums for over a year), it is great to have alternatives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc321 Posted October 21, 2014 Report Share Posted October 21, 2014 Be aware that Syncthing is now Pulse: https://ind.ie/pulse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anh Huynh Posted October 24, 2014 Report Share Posted October 24, 2014 I love synchthing. It's not very stable at the moment. When it's ready. I move off btsync Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
urza Posted October 25, 2014 Author Report Share Posted October 25, 2014 Yes, I am also waiting for version 1.0 cant wait to dump btsync.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hungarianhc Posted October 25, 2014 Report Share Posted October 25, 2014 I wish bittorrent sync would update the iOS crash to support the new iOS8 extensions like Dropbox. Now that the decentralized sync market is getting more competitive, this is something I NEED in order to do full round-trip file editing between Mac, Linux, and iOS. The first non-cloud, decentralized sync solution to do that will get my commitment. And I'm happy to donate / pay $ for that as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B.Jay Posted October 27, 2014 Report Share Posted October 27, 2014 I love synchthing. It's not very stable at the moment. When it's ready. I move off btsync "Not very stable"? That's not exactly my experience... I was actually testing Syncthing for quite a while now (between a variety of VMs and a variety of ARM devices), starting with 0.8.xx, and didn't have much of a problem with it - other than it being unable to resume interrupted syncs (not sure if "resume sync" has been already implemented in 0.10.3 or if it's still work in progress - haven't checked the changelogs / git commit in quite a while). For me it's working rather perfectly, though you well better expect "breakage" to happen for as long as there's a "0" as the leading major version number. There was only one version in the 0.9.xx series where sync totally broke, but that was fixed within a few days at the next release version (I guess it's worth pointing out that Pulse/Syncthing gets at least one update a week - they don't take 3+ weeks to fix up small-fry problems like a non-working "listening port value"). As for "sync speed" ... within my LAN the speeds are far above BTSync. While it doesn't max the Gigabit link, I see up to 60/75MB/s when syncing a couple of large (i.e. Linux CD/DVD ISOs) files (Windows via SMB tops out at ~110/115MB/s here). With a ton of small files Syncthing still fares well better than Windows' SMB ... synchronizing a test folder consisting out of 8GB of random small files (100K files, 4KB min, 20MB max, randomly generated with a script to mimic a mixture of image and mp3 files in terms of file sizes) runs at rather consistent 31MB/s average where copying via Windows (via SMB) results in <4MB/s averaged. I once tried the same with BTSync (back in the 1.2 days) and it wasn't too breathtaking as well (~7MB/s avg. if memory serves me well). I actually have only one system still running BTSync (1.3.109) - once "resume sync" is confirmed to work this last instance will fly off and be replaced with Syncthing as well; I don't want to make my friends switch before this last "showstopper" is resolved - it's a pain in the rear when a large folder starts re-syncing from scratch because it was interrupted before it finished up. Lastly, I run Syncthing as a service (via the NSSM "How To" method) and am very pleased with the browser UI. It's consistent across platforms, loads up incredibly fast (much unlike a certain 1.4 UI) and is well structured (the BTSync devs could take that as an example about "How to do things absolutely right"). I'm also in the progress to code up a systray indicator (I know about Syncthing-Tray for Windows, but that one's outright c**p) to act much like the Dropbox one (just the most important notifications and not spamming each-and-every event to the screen like Syncthing-Tray does). Other than that... since Syncthing is Open Source one can always fork it (am currently trying to get cozy with "Go") and iron out "betterfications" if said "betterfications" happen to go down south (i.e. "absolutely unfavorable UI revamp" or other "pushing certain dependencies upon users just because")... not exactly doable with close source software. EDIT: Just to point this one out as well: With Syncthing you don't have to use their "Announce" server (the equivalent to the relay/tracker of BTSync, to put it very simply) it you already wear a tinfoil hat, you can setup your own server and make Syncthing use that one instead; though your own server has to be reachable from the internet if you want to use it with other peers outside your LAN (read: either leased server of your own machine in a DMZ). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RomanZ Posted October 29, 2014 Report Share Posted October 29, 2014 Dear community members, I'm closing this topic as it becomes more advertisement of SyncThing. It will stay available for searches, views and future reference. If you are interested in Sync alternatives - please see Wikipedia page comparing different synchronization apps page. If you have questions or topics to discuss on SyncThing - please visit SyngThing forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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