# Command Line Option -protocol-address

**URL:** https://forum.syncthing.net/t/command-line-option-protocol-address/10529
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [September 9, 2017, 10:54pm UTC](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/command-line-option-protocol-address/10529 "2017-09-09T22:54:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 8

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![obma](https://forum.syncthing.net/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/ac91a4/32.png) [@obma](https://forum.syncthing.net/u/obma)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 9:04am UTC](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/command-line-option-protocol-address/10529/8 "2017-09-27T09:04:59Z")

</div>

As announced, here’s the current version of my init-script, and some background why I do this.

[stmultiuser.in](https://forum-uploads.syncthingcdn.net/original/2X/e/e1e070bac61fcae44a9c255cdfa470e9ffae7d63.in) (11.1 KB)

The environment I use it in:

- two FreeBSD 11.1 servers at two sites, sharing data with users via nfs, samba, sftp - and now syncthing
- users sync their data (mostly portions of it) to laptops (Win, Mac, Linux) and mobiles (Android, iOS)
- on the servers there’s one Syncthing instance per user, running as the user to keep permissions/ownership (the users still use nfs, samba and sftp to access their network-drives)
- one of the servers is somehow a “master server” by being added as introducer to all other servers and users

How I synchronized stuff before:

- up to recently there was only one Server
- owncloud/nextcloud was used to sync laptops and mobiles
- network shares were mounted via sftp into own-/nextcloud
- especially common files caused a lot of traffic between the sites, because of the central server architecture

Why I switched to syncthing, and built the multi-user init script:

- Syncthings decentralized architecture is a mercy - it’s easy now to have a second server (or even more)
- it keeps the servers in sync, plus
- users moving between sites (what happens quite a lot) is no problem
  - that’s what kept me from setting up a server on the second site
  - Let’s say a user has added something on site A, has it synchronized to server A and then moves to site B. Arriving at B, server A has partly synchronized with server B. Now synchronizing the users laptop with server B could/will lead to conflicts.
  - With Syncthing and it’s peer-to-peer approach this use-case is not only no problem anymore, it even safes traffic between the sites by “sneaker-netting” (parts of) the data between sites.

Any comments are appreciated

---

_[View the full topic](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/command-line-option-protocol-address/10529)._