Infinit

Infinit is a large-scale peer-to-peer distributed file system like Ivy, CFS and Pastis.

Infinit aims at providing the two following properties.

# Reliable Storage: People want to backup and/or reliably store personal files, including private files, so the files are never lost.
# Sharing: People want to be able to search for files they like, including movies, music, and the like, but would also like to share their files while keeping a control on who is allowed to access them.

Infinit provides these two fundamental properties by guaranteeing high availability, integrity, authenticity, scalability and so forth very much like many other peer-to-peer file systems. However, Infinit enables users to protect their files from being written and read by relying on ACL - Access Control Lists but also by encrypting files contents. Infinit goes even further by enabling users of the peer-to-peer network to administer the file system without relying on any centralised server nor on a single administrator.

The drawbacks of Infinit lie in the user-space implementation which involve communication between multiple processes. Additionally, authenticity and security is ensured by expensive cryptographic functions which considerably slow down Infinit compared to a network file system like NFS or AFS.

External links

* [http://i.nfin.it The Infinit file system website]
* [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk The Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge]