Google engineers have introduced a completely new approach to file sharing, Upspin. Which solves the ingenious way the problem of fragmentation of resources.
UpspinToday, people are losing a lot of time on their quest, moving and repacking of data. A new open source project Upspin is something like a global namespace for all files that completely change the way we use resources outside the local systems. And all this happens on the basis of simple mechanisms Unix permissions and network communications.
These all network drives – Google Drive, onedrive, Dropbox, or whatever else, they all have one fundamental problem. Each of them is a closed world, each has its own ways of locating files and making them available. And yet this is the Internet, conceived as a network of networks, communication through universal protocols. One would rather find some kind of universal resource locator, like the URI scheme for the Web. Or something that does not depend on Microsoft, Facebook and Google.
That’s the problem that foresee by the team of engineers at Google. Andrew Gerrand, Eric Grosse, Rob Pike, Eduardo Pinheiro and Dave Presotto write the above documentation :
Apart from the occasional bypass using a URL, the information provided by these services are only available through these services locators. If someone wants to convey the image of Facebook on his Twitter. One must first download it from Facebook, save and upload to Twitter. It should not be possible to transmit an image directly from Facebook to Twitter?
Plan9: global namespace
Upspin extends this concept in an analogous manner to the example. Sshfs file system, creating a path associated with a particular user. For example ann@example.com/dir/file is the path to the file in the file directory on the machine example.com dir used by the wearer ann. In Upspin there is no such thing as a local file, all files must be in your namespace.
Files of course are the symbolic links, whether for the directories or for other files. And access to them is controlled in a scheme based on public key infrastructure for each file in the directory. All the necessary access information is stored in this directory, in a text file describing what is internal linking of files. If such a control file in the directory does not exist, it means this is only the local user who has access to the files.
Safety above all
Upspin are designed to help not only for performance, but for safety, thus declare by its creator. This whole global system of names is kept in check by the server structure, which includes:
- key server that stores public keys of all users of the system,
- server storage, data storage and indexing them using a hash function
- directory server, describing the relationship between the data on the server, storage, and users possessing the data. Directory server connected with the development of the system with other directory servers. Through a federated system, it becomes possible to search for files.
This design of the system means that even if there is a violation of the server infrastructure. You do not have to worry about access to your files. You just need to have the keys, and the entire encryption occurs on your computer.
Upspin Besides the services of the great G
The emergence Upspin is a real breakthrough in an era when corporations provide users with ready-made, sealed products. Which can create various applications to free, secure exchange of data between users without any artificial barriers. That’s all the creators stress of the project, not a product of Google. It’s open source basis for many other products. Which will also be easy to exchange files, like today. We send each other e-mails, regardless of which mail server you use.