[p2p-hackers] P2P Backup Survey...

[Martin LANDERS]

Hi,

> http://research.microsoft.com/sn/Farsite/publications.htm
>
> "Feasibility of a Serverless Distributed File System Deployed on an
> Existing Set of Desktop PCs"

I'm aware of that study, and it's quite nice. They have a quite a few
interesting results (like the average amount of free disk space on
all the machines, data on uptime correlation, etc.). The "problem" with
the study is, that all of that data has been collected from the computers
of Microsoft Employees. This makes the data biased in at least two ways:
a) it's a corporate scenario and b) it's (nearly) only Windows machines.
Also, the study is more than 2 years old by now, which means downloading
movies, etc. from the net was way less popular than it (supposedly) is
now.

In fact, this study is one of the reasons for my survey. Some of the
numbers in there (avg. 50% hard disk space free) seem "too good to be
true", which is why I'd like to find out if the results are still valid,
when a) collecting data from arbitrary internet users and b) from a number
of platforms, today. I guess that the figures will look a lot more grim
under these circumstances.

Sadly, so far my collected data won't help much, as most of it is highly
biased. I figure that over 80% of all answers so far (73, ahem...) are
from students here at NUS, making the study a study of Windows machines at
a University. That's why I need your help in promoting the study to other
users, outside of universities... So, if anyone of you has good ideas how
to get other people to do the study (forums, newsgroups? which ones?), I'd
love to hear about them.


Thanks a lot,

cu
Martin