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Public service to easily access files directly within the Wuala DFS
Since Wuala has created this amazing distributed file system, I would like to see, and be apart of, the creation of a service that is constantly on the P2P network and available to download files through. For example, if someone decided to upload an image to Wuala and directly link to it on their web page. Or if someone finds a file they want to share, they can send a direct link to the file so that people can download it from the network, or take the link and embed it on their site.
Another, more technical, example would be, I find an image that I want to put on my web page, http://wua.la/RexM/Images/SLC+Mountai... (for example). There should be a URL I can go to that will access that file directly, without having to open Wuala. So I should be able to access that file by going to:
http://services.wua.la/download/RexM/... (for example)
The service would then download the file I'm trying to view off the network, then display what it downloaded in the screen. (This can be done by setting the Content-type header in the response)
I believe the biggest problem with this would be that the service would be downloading from the P2P network a lot, but maybe wouldn't necessarily be uploading/contributing very much. Let me know what you guys think, I just thought of it today so it's quite possible there's a flaw I'm not considering.
Obviously since anyone could possibly hit the service it's basically anonymous read access, so only files that are public would be able to be viewed through this service.
Another, more technical, example would be, I find an image that I want to put on my web page, http://wua.la/RexM/Images/SLC+Mountai... (for example). There should be a URL I can go to that will access that file directly, without having to open Wuala. So I should be able to access that file by going to:
http://services.wua.la/download/RexM/... (for example)
The service would then download the file I'm trying to view off the network, then display what it downloaded in the screen. (This can be done by setting the Content-type header in the response)
I believe the biggest problem with this would be that the service would be downloading from the P2P network a lot, but maybe wouldn't necessarily be uploading/contributing very much. Let me know what you guys think, I just thought of it today so it's quite possible there's a flaw I'm not considering.
Obviously since anyone could possibly hit the service it's basically anonymous read access, so only files that are public would be able to be viewed through this service.
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We might offer direct download of small files in the future.
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Inappropriate?This was done a few months ago. Luzius set up a server with wuala running and redirected the http requests to the Wuala network. It worked exactly like you described it in your post. Only public files were accessible, we could direct link images, etc.
The problem is: who pays for the traffic?
Wuala can offer good download speeds / lots of storage / no file size limit because they use the P2P network to save money in traffic. With pure http access this is not possible.
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Inappropriate?Well, whoever is hosting the service would be the one that pays for the traffic. Who pays for the traffic of imageshack.us or photobucket.com? It's possible that ads being displayed when uploading files to the service would pay for the cost of traffic.
Using the Wuala DFS would cut down costs of having to store all of that information yourself, thus it would probably run at a slightly lower cost than the sites mentioned above.
The service would leverage the good download speeds and lots of storage that you mentioned because it would still be using the P2P network to save money in storage instead of traffic.
There would probably need to be a file size limit in place for the service because of restrictions in different web technology's ability to handle uploads via HTTP.
Edit: This is all assuming it was also possible to add files to the network through a web interface as well as link to files you find while using the Wuala client. The file size limitations would need to be in place for uploading new files through this interface and not necessarily for files that already exist in the Wuala network.
Edit 2: I'm about to go home for the weekend, please excuse the delayed response as I probably won't be able to get back to this until Tuesday.2 Comments Add a comment
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Well, storage is _very_cheap nowadays, but traffic is not! But if you want to set up such a service yourself I'm sure the Developers are going to help you in every possible way! :) -
For cheap bandwidth, you can look at dedibox.fr
These are small dedicated servers with no bandwith limitation, reasonable price and very good connectivy (the 2nd ISP on the French market, this facility is targeted to balance the bandwidth consumption of their customers and minimize their bandwidth costs)
Imagine a cluster of these little machines serving files through HTTP (you could be the load balancer with 303) -
Inappropriate?The only way i see this happening is one of 2 ways:
Offical way:
The ability to forward a second port to your wuala instance that runs a very simple http server. With the possibility of some kind of "uptime bonus".
Wuala servers could act as a manager issuing 303 See Other.
There would be a limit on size.
Unoffical way:
You throw wuala on a web server and configure Apache to serve the mount point for FSI.1 Comment Add a comment
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Or maybe you lay Wuala nicely on the server, i dont know.
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Inappropriate?I also thought of this idea, but after all it comes down to the traffic which would be gigantic because first the "web service" (apache + wuala, etc.) would have to download the file from the wuala network and then serve it over the http. so for 1 GB there would be 2 GB traffic. Then, if a second user requests the same file, there would be 4 GB traffic, unless the apache caches the files (which would need a lot of server space)
If the team adds proxy support, I think it would be very easy for everybody just to start wuala to access the public files. -
Inappropriate?Wuala cache's files (Which raises questions as to why you are not just storing local)1 Comment Add a comment
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But it would still require a lot of server space...
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Inappropriate?We might offer direct download of small files in the future.
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With "small" meaning...? <1><5MB? Would be enough to host a small website in Wuala - but you pay for it! ;-)
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less than 300KB
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Ok, that would be a small homepage, but still possible I guess! :)
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Inappropriate?Roger
You could limit that to registered users of wuala, they can directly download all others must go through the "Start" button.1 Comment Add a comment
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This is about direct http access to public files, which means that nobody would be prompted for login information.
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Inappropriate?There's too much potential for abuse. If you are going to offer it, you'd have to authenticate it is a person asking for the file by performing a CAPTCHA (e.g. pick three picturse of natures).
If you allow hotlinking, someone can upload files to Wuala (songs, videos, etc), create a torrent then webseed link to the public Wuala files. One popular torrent can take up a lot of bandwidth. You could possibly minimize this by running the server on a budget server with unlimited bandwidth pricing. Run it at 10Mbps instead of 100Mbps or Gigabit and users could only push at max 3 terabytes a month. I've seen budget servers in France (kimsufi?) for 20-30 euros.
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