Torrent-like syncronization

Feature
1

Hello people,

I am a member of a gaming community where we usually play games on a weekly basis. We use a lot of third party modifications that frequently get updated. To handle that we have a home-made synchronization software the runs on the host server we all connect to when we game.

The thing is that we are a relatively large number of people, the modifications are kind of large (total size ~ 50 GB), and the server has a limited upload speed (stationed in a member’s house who needs some bandwith for himself, and thus capped at 12 MB/s out), meaning synchronization for our members can be kind of slow.

I thus figured that a torrent-like synchronization would be ideal where you can download updated data not only from the primary server, but also from other members who in torrent lingo would be acting as seeders.

My question is whether the above scenario is possible using Syncthing? I read around a bit in the documentation and I could not find an answer. I read that you need to provide IDs to other machines if you want to synchronize with those ones, but that would necessitate everyone needing to know all other members’ IDs, and who is online at any given point.

Thus, my question phrased differently: would it be possible to create something like a torrent-file, which users can download and open with Syncthing and it would work just like a torrent?

2

Please have a look at https://docs.syncthing.net/intro if you haven’t already.

You will only need IDs for the initial setup. After that, everything should work with no user intervention. If you connect all devices with each other, it won’t matter if some of them are offline at the particular time. As long as at least one is online and has the required files, Syncthing will synchronise them.

Just for clarification, you don’t open anything with Syncthing. You set up a folder (or multiple), which you then sync between multiple devices. The initial setup is manual, while the synchronisation itself is automatic. You can use config options like Introducer to speed up the process, especially if you’ve got a lot of devices and want to share the folder with all of them.

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Also, bare in mind, syncthing is sync software, not distribution software. One bad actor can delete everything, and the deletions will be synced and propagated to everyone, so I am not sure it will work well for your purpose.

Sure, there are different folder types, but those are opt in and only meaningful locally.

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