this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
120 points (95.5% liked)

Asklemmy

43733 readers
1648 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It's kind of silly, but I still really dig the idea behind torrenting and peer to peer sharing of data. It's cool to think about any old computer helping pass along some odd bits & bytes of data, whether a goofy drawing or strange story.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This might be stretching the definition of "common" and "torrenting," but BitTorrent created BitTorrent Sync with similar tech for personal file synchronization. It was later rebranded Resilio and still exists today.

https://www.resilio.com/

An open-source alternative that works in a similar fashion, SyncThing, also exists.

https://syncthing.net/

[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I would consider this to be one of the intended functions of torrent files. Torrents started as faster ways to share files peer to peer. If a few people had a large file on their machines they could each upload part to someone who needs it essentially multiplying their upload bandwidth. This became less popular as internet speeds increased, except for "illegal" stuff. I would definitely try one of these...if I had more than one computer.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

A common use case for SyncThing is keeping a password file up to date between, say, your PC and your phone. It'll even work remotely, thanks to the presence of relays.

(The downsides include pretty heavy battery usage )