Welcome to the Backup P2P wiki!

We are happy to announce the last important update of version 0.0.2.

The new release 0.0.2.2 includes loads of improvements, in different aspects of the application:

Stability and memory management:

You may have noticed that previous versions were working but their lifecycle was reduced because of approximate memory management during backup and restore transfers.

Now these problems have been seriously addressed and we are happy to announce that the application had never been that stable for regular use. It seems that Backup P2P is an open source project gaining in maturity !

Encryption and key generation:

Different bugs have been fixed in update 0.0.2.2 around cryptographic providers and automatic key generation for a given user. This increases security and opens the way for user-defined encryption mode. For now, AES is the default encryption algorithm but next major version should allow to select a different cryptographic provider (Blowfish, AES, No encryption), and change the length of the secret key.

Localization:

The application is now fully localized and the language management system has been revisited to provide easier translation with external files, supporting UTF8 encoding. Also, the application is now available in Russian !

Free download - More information - Get started with Backup P2P

A special thank you to David Rau (Russia) for the many bugs he found and the Russian translation. 

What is Backup P2P?

This is an open source software to create secured, automatic and distributed backups of your data.

The concept is to connect you to trusted partners so you can share storage space with them, and backup your data remotely.

Backup P2P is a peer to peer backup system allowing to:

• Share disk space with trusted partners: Backup P2P uses the Jabber community(*) to help you manage a group of partners. The users in this group can then exchange data with you, and you use their disk space to store backups of your own files.
• Select files you want to monitor: you can select one or more folders you want to monitor. These files will be regularly scanned to detect added, modified or removed files.
• Automatically start backups in response to modifications detected, and store updated versions of your files. Your files are sent over the network to your partners, but your data is encrypted before leaving your computer with your own private key, and remains encrypted during all the network transfer and storage.
• Restore your files: you can restore your files previously backed up on a per need basis (files lost, deleted, disk crash, etc.). Backup P2P contacts the peers belonging to your community and restores your files. All you have to do is keep your private key in a secure place (1kb file). Backup P2P keeps different versions of your files so you can restore one of them at any time. You may want to use this if you have been working on a file one day, but you realize the day after that you regret the changes you had made! Incredible but true, Backup P2P allows you to go back in time!
• Schedule the moments you want to have the service work. Backup P2P will not use computer resources while you are working if you don't want to.

The software uses an rsync-like algorithm to perform incremental copies of your files, minimizing the transfer volume. When updating the backup of a file, only the modified data chunks are sent over.

(*) Access to the Jabber community: the use of our software requires a Jabber account. If you don't have one already, Backup P2P can create one for you (it is totally free and non intrusive). A Jabber account is basically an email address (like john.smith AT jabber.org) you can use with many instant messaging software. Jabber is an open IM standard and, today, its community involves around 200 million members.

Security and Privacy

• The XMPP protocol used to establish IM server connection ensures that the highest level of security will be used, among those available.
• Only people you have explicitly allowed can exchange data with you.
• You can control the amount of data you allow people to store on your disk.
• Data sent over the network is encrypted with your private key The security level is flexible and can be adapted to your needs. By default, the algorithm AES 128 is used, but keys can be extended to 256 or 512 bits.

Backup P2P is open source and your contributions are welcome!

This is a call for contributions! (it does not mean you shouldn't read the lines below ;) )

Our priority for the moment is really around translation. 

Only French and English language packs are available in release 0.1.0. It would be great to have new languages like Spanish, German, Italian, etc for the next release !

You can help Backup P2P to become even better in many different ways, its definitely not all about coding & Java stuff (even if this is useful too). 

Please refer to the contributions page or contact us if you want more information on how to help us!

NOTE: Backup P2P is an open source project hosted on SourceForge and distributed with Apache 2.0 license. This means you can use it freely in your applications, including commercial ones.