Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2001 08:26:10 +0000 From: Paul Robinson <paul@akita.co.uk> To: Francisco Reyes <lists@natserv.com> Cc: FreeBSD Chat List <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Mini survey. Backup service for BSDs Message-ID: <0111040826100G.01404@stinky.akitanet.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <20011104215600.O19362-100000@zoraida.natserv.net> References: <20011104215600.O19362-100000@zoraida.natserv.net>
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On Monday 05 November 2001 03:45, Francisco Reyes wrote: > > I was contemplating a few months ago coming up with some sort of open, > > public, distributed backup system that used something like PGP or similar > > crypto across a peer-to-peer-like architecture. And make it free. > > What would be the benefit? 1. Distributed multiple copies of data means redundancy 2. Basically a secure extension to existing P2P, meaning that we're using 'proven' technology 3. Free to use so would scupper your plans for this business... sorry. :-) 4. Easier to setup regular backups than a DAT drive - that can only be a good thing. 5. More reliable providing that the redundancy is relatively high There are a lot of details that need to be worked out, but in principle it could work. The problem is that for availability reasons you need to 'send' your data encrypted up to the network, and it has to be saved in a multitude of places so there is a high chance of it being available when you need it back later. You may be storing data from other's drives, but because it's being duplicated so much, the maths say you need to store a great deal more on other's behalf than they store on your behalf. If you're backing up 100Mb, and it is getting saved in 100 locations, then to make things fair you need to be prepared to handle upto 10Gb of data on their behalf. If nobody agrees to those rules, there will always be a shortage of available diskspace. > > If you can work out how to make sure the data on your system is > > secure, but they also manage to make a recovery when the private key > > disappears with the machine that gets screwed, then you might be onto > > something. ;-) > > That remains the most difficult element. Indeed. However, you don't need full-on public/private key encryption. The question is as to whether a more traditional one-way system (like 3DES, etc.) would be strong enough. If so, the only thing that needs to be retained by the client would be the passphrase. -- Paul Robinson To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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