World-Wide Computer Cloud Storage Network
By James Donahue
July 12, 2017
As business and governments have grown more and more dependent upon computerized systems of conducting business the problem of storing data has grown to phenomenal heights. Thus has emerged the cloud system of storing vast amounts of computerized data.
But the storage systems to date have been developed by major United States corporations like Amazon, Google, IDrive, iCloud, Microsoft and others. That means that programs operating in other parts of the world are almost totally dependent upon the U.S. storage systems for packing away important information.
It works out to be a good business deal for the U.S. companies involved in data storage. But there are potential problems that have business and government leaders in other parts of the world concerned. As David Vorick, founder of Sia Tech, explained: “Say you are a company in Russia, you’re a company in China, a company in Turkey, Iraq, Iran; if you want to use cloud technology our only option is a US infrastructure provider. This means if the US decides to make sanction plays, economic plays, any sort of power move against your country, your infrastructure may be shut down as a result.”
Since the advent of Bitcoin, various other “permissionless blockchain” systems of storing computer data have been emerging, with Sia standing out as one of the best for worldwide storage. That is because Vorick and his co-founder Luke Champine have managed to establish a decentralized cloud storage system now linking hosts in all five continents.
Vorick says the objective behind Sia has been to “provide infrastructure that nobody, including ourselves, has control over; something with no failure points.” To achieve this, the stored data is split among the various hosts all over the world. They use a technique they call erasure coding that spreads the information among 50 different hosting storage systems. All of the parts of the data are separated like a jigsaw puzzle, and coded, so that if any one or two storage hosts fails, nothing is lost. Any 20 surviving hosts of the total can rebuild the entire file.
“A host going down can be considered a rare event; in order for you to lose your data you have to have 30 rare events at the same time,” he said.
It seems that California’s Silicone Valley lead in computer technology is now facing some powerful competition. Programmers all over the world are building Internet services designed to compete against the US capitalistic system of doing business.
By James Donahue
July 12, 2017
As business and governments have grown more and more dependent upon computerized systems of conducting business the problem of storing data has grown to phenomenal heights. Thus has emerged the cloud system of storing vast amounts of computerized data.
But the storage systems to date have been developed by major United States corporations like Amazon, Google, IDrive, iCloud, Microsoft and others. That means that programs operating in other parts of the world are almost totally dependent upon the U.S. storage systems for packing away important information.
It works out to be a good business deal for the U.S. companies involved in data storage. But there are potential problems that have business and government leaders in other parts of the world concerned. As David Vorick, founder of Sia Tech, explained: “Say you are a company in Russia, you’re a company in China, a company in Turkey, Iraq, Iran; if you want to use cloud technology our only option is a US infrastructure provider. This means if the US decides to make sanction plays, economic plays, any sort of power move against your country, your infrastructure may be shut down as a result.”
Since the advent of Bitcoin, various other “permissionless blockchain” systems of storing computer data have been emerging, with Sia standing out as one of the best for worldwide storage. That is because Vorick and his co-founder Luke Champine have managed to establish a decentralized cloud storage system now linking hosts in all five continents.
Vorick says the objective behind Sia has been to “provide infrastructure that nobody, including ourselves, has control over; something with no failure points.” To achieve this, the stored data is split among the various hosts all over the world. They use a technique they call erasure coding that spreads the information among 50 different hosting storage systems. All of the parts of the data are separated like a jigsaw puzzle, and coded, so that if any one or two storage hosts fails, nothing is lost. Any 20 surviving hosts of the total can rebuild the entire file.
“A host going down can be considered a rare event; in order for you to lose your data you have to have 30 rare events at the same time,” he said.
It seems that California’s Silicone Valley lead in computer technology is now facing some powerful competition. Programmers all over the world are building Internet services designed to compete against the US capitalistic system of doing business.