IDFS: the Individual Distributed File System
Zicheng Wang · 2022
Distributed file systems are widely used in the cloud environment, which simplifies the process of accessing files in different machines. By using the distributed file system, commercial cloud storage like Google Drive, OneDrive, and iCloud offers convenient ways for users to access personal files. However, cloud storage has privacy issues, and the expense of purchasing these services is expensive. Therefore, a distributed file system for personal use that utilizes users’ vacant local disks is desired. This paper presents a simple distributed file system, the Individual Distributed File System (IDFS), that enables users to hold their data at their hands conveniently. IDFS allows users to access files that locates in personal devices in different network environments seamlessly. To this end, IDFS uses the wireless device and relay connection of the server. Instead of storing all files in centralized cloud servers in the public network, IDFS keeps files in personal devices, which is promising for keeping personal files private. To evaluate the effectiveness of IDFS, we design a prototype of IDFS and implement several experiments. The results show that IDFS makes an offline device-to-device file transfer quick and convenient, and it provides high file accessibility without consuming too much storage.