Wuala: Peer to peer online file storage and sharing

Filed under: Internet, Features, P2P, Beta

Wuala: Peer to peer online file storage and sharing

by Brad Linder Feb 14th 2008

If you're tired of online storage services that give you just a gigabyte or two of space for your files, you might want ot check out Wuala. It's a peer to peer storage solution, which means that you can store a near infinite amount of data online just by freeing up some space on your own hard drive to host other users' encrypted files. Wuala is currently in private alpha, but we've got 500 invites to give away. Read on to find out how to snag one.

When you first sign up for Wuala, you'll be able to upload up to 1GB. Once you've demonstrated that you've got a high speed internet connection and that your computer is on for more than 4 hours a day, Wuala will let you allocate free space on your hard drive for hosting other users files. If you make 10GB available, you'll be able to upload 10GB of your own files. Sharing 50GB will net you 50GB of online storage. And so on.

The program interface is familiar and easy to use. It looks a lot like Windows Explorer, with a system of folders and file icons. You can easily create or delete folders just by right-clicking to bring up a context menu. And you can either upload files by opening an "Add Files" window or just by dragging and dropping them from your desktop.

When you upload a file it's encrypted, broken up into bits, and then sent out to multiple computers for storage. That redundancy means when you want to download your files, you don't have to wait for an individual user to be online. It also means that downloads should be super-speedy since you can download from multiple sources simultaneously. And since the files are encrypted, the users who are hosting them for you can't read them unless you choose to share your files.

There is a sort of social networking aspect to Wuala. You can mark folders as public, private, or shared. Contents of a public folder can be viewed by any Waula user, while shared folders can only be seen by your friends. But if you want to treat Wuala as a personal private storage space, you don't need to do anything special. Your folders will all be marked private by default.

You can also browse public files uploaded by other users. That includes photos, videos, audio, and documents. You can search by tag, most viewed, or most recently uploaded.

Your computer treats Wuala like a network drive, but its contents aren't displayed. In a few weeks, Wuala plans to release an update that will let you treat the application as a virtual hard drive so you can drag and drop files directly through a file explorer. This means you will also be able to automate backups using tools like SyncBack or Cobian Backup.

In the future, the developers may add their own backup utilities to Wuala. The company also plans to release an API so that 3rd party developers can write their own applications.

Overall we're pretty impressed with Wuala so far. The only thing we don't particularly like is the service's hard to remember URL. Type www.wuala.com into your web browser and you get a domain parking page. If you want to get to Wuala's page, you'll have to go to wua.la. If you just plan on using the desktop client that's not a big problem since you only need to visit the site to download and install your software once. But in future releases, you'll be able to launch Wuala from the web site and share files and links through the website.

Wuala is available for Mac, Linux, and Windows.

The first 500 Download Squad readers to use the invitation code "downloadsquad" can get in on the private alpha. Just go to download.wua.la, download the Wuala client for your operating system, and enter the code when prompted.

Tags: backup, p2p, sharing, storage, wuala

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Antexter said 9:59AM on 2-14-2008

Thanks downloadsquad can't wait to try it out.

Peter said 10:32AM on 2-14-2008

Peer to peer offsite backup is a great idea, but none of the services support 3 essential things:

1 - Block level transfers. I don't want to have to upload all of every changed file every time.
2 - File versioning. I want to keep a certain number of previous versions for safety.
3 - Ability to run detached from the company's servers. If my data isn't stored on their servers and the software vendor goes under, I want to be able to get my data back.

Until someone can get those 3 things working, I'll stick with Mozy.

Patrick72 said 10:32AM on 2-14-2008

Hmmm, interesting but very risky imho. What about users who store (encrypted) files which are infected by a virus? Does my antivirus scanner detects these encrypted and infected files? Can I block users who want to store infected files on my computer? Can I remove their infected files? And what about pedofile users who sneaky store disgusting childporn pictures or movies on my computer?

Dave said 10:56AM on 2-14-2008

Am I missing the point? If I have 10gb of free space on my hard disk... why allocate that 10gb to other users in return for 10gb on their hard disks... why not just let me keep my 10gb for my files? Sorry if I'm way off the mark lol

Dave.

Duval said 12:06PM on 2-14-2008

Interesting concept... Perhaps? Useful? Not really. I have to agree with you on that one, the security issues are just to large for a benefit thats to small.

John said 10:57AM on 2-14-2008

Dave,

I know, huh??

Only thing I can guess is that it's for remote access.. ie. you're away from home but you can still access your data which is stored on-line on someone else's computer.

The part I can't figure out is, assuming, you're not at home, (we'll say on vacation) and your computer's off, the person(s) whose data is stored on your computer is screwed, right??

Peter said 12:05PM on 2-14-2008

Dave & John - You're completely missing the point. It's for off site backups. Sure you could keep the 10 Gigs yourself, but what happens when your drive fails?
With this system, you get a new drive, install your OS and download all your files from the remote computer.
That's the point. It's not just storage, it's backup and recovery.

John said 3:07PM on 2-14-2008

Ok, true true, I understand a bit better now... Duh on me :) Still don't like the idea of my data being on someone else's drive... or as was mentioned earlier someone else's data on my computer :S

Overall just seems like a crappy concept, could be just me though :)

Mike said 7:53AM on 2-15-2008

No, it's not you at all - this is a ridiculous concept. Off-site backup? Never heard of DVDs? Forget porn - what if someone stores their illegally downloaded warez on your drive? This whole concept is near zero benefit and high potential for disaster. A real winner!

zondron said 8:46AM on 2-15-2008

so i store my files on others computers, what about those users that will find a way to decrypt and access my files?

i like the concept, but it's useful among close friends, people you trust

benmccann.com said 10:20PM on 3-13-2008

It think a lot of people here are missing a lot of the key concepts of this system. Wuala offers off site backup at no cost to the end user. A 500GB drive costs about $100. So you share 250GB of your disk to backup 250 GB of your data. That's a $50 one-time fee for the disk space. Versus Mozy, which would be $130 per month for the same amount of backup! Plus this is better than RAID because if there's a fire in your house you're still protected since the data is offsite.
Also, the data is encrypted. This means if someone is storing pirated music, kiddie porn, etc. on your system you have absolutely no way of knowing that nor would anyone else who gains access to your system. So how could you ever be accused of storing this info? Similarly, they have no way of accessing your information. It's the same encryption used to shop online, so the risk of it being broken is miniscule. It's not like the DRM that keeps getting broken because only you have the key needed to decrypt the data. Encryption schemes like that used on BluRay get broken because the DVD player needs the key to decrypt the disc if you want to watch the movie, so someone smart can buy a player and find the key. With Wuala you are the only person with the encryption key.
Finally, the sensitive financial information I have on my computer is encrypted locally. If it weren't then I wouldn't be anymore comfortable storing it at Mozy, work, or anywhere else offsite. And storing it onsite only is a bad idea in case you get robbed, there's a fire, etc.

benmccann.com said 10:30PM on 3-13-2008

I also forgot to mention that your data is replicated on multiple other computers, so you don't have to worry about someone turning off their computer and losing access to your data. The amount of disk space you need to share for a given amount in return is determined by the amount of time you're online.
They then use erasure codes to ensure that only an optimal number of copies of the data needs to be stored. Very interesting! Watch the Google tech talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xKZ4KGkQY8

-Ben

Dim said 10:19PM on 3-16-2008

i have a lot of invitation for this soft.....

If somebody want one... give me your e-mail ;)

nice soft i use it since two month now and i'm very happy of it!!!

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