File hosting service

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File hosting service

A file hosting service, online file storage service, or online media center is an Internet hosting service

Internet hosting service

An Internet hosting service is a service that runs Internet servers, allowing organizations and individuals to serve content to the Internet. There are various levels of service and various kinds of services offered....
specifically designed to host static content, typically large files that are not web pages. Typically they allow web and FTP

File Transfer Protocol

File Transfer Protocol is a network protocol used to transfer data from one computer to another through a network such as the Internet.FTP is a file transfer protocol for exchanging and manipulating files over a Transmission Control Protocol computer network....
access. They can be optimized for serving many users (as is implied by the term "hosting") or be optimized for single-user storage (as is implied by the term "storage").

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Encyclopedia

A file hosting service, online file storage service, or online media center is an Internet hosting service

Internet hosting service

File Transfer Protocol

Video hosting service

A video hosting service allows individuals to upload video clips to an Internet website. The video host will then store the video on its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view this video....
, virtual storage

Virtual storage

Virtual storage can refer to:* virtual memory; IBM uses "virtual storage" rather than "virtual memory"* The storage seen by clients when storage virtualization is used...
and remote backup

Remote backup service

A remote, online, or managed backup service is a service that provides users with an online system for backup and storing computer files. List of online backup services are companies that provide this type of service....
.

Uses

Software file hosting

Authors of Shareware

Shareware

The term shareware, popularized by Bob Wallace, refers to copyrighted commercial software that is distributed without payment on a trial basis and is limited by any combination of functionality, availability, or convenience....
, Freeware

Freeware

Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee. Freeware is different from shareware; the latter obliges the user to pay ....
and Open Source

Open source

Open source is an approach to design, development, and distribution offering practical accessibility to a product's source . Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical Strategy element of their business operations....
/Free software

Free software

Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware...
often use file hosting services to serve their software. The inherent problem with free downloads is the huge bandwidth cost. These hosts also offer additional services to the authors such as statistics or other marketing features.

Personal file storage

Personal file storage services are aimed at private individuals, offering a sort of "network storage" for personal backup, file access, or file distribution. Users can upload their files and share them publicly or keep them password-protected.

Prior to the advent of personal file storage services, off-site backup services were not typically affordable for individual and small office computer users.

Sometimes people prefer hosting their files on a publicly accessible HTTP server. In this case, they generally choose paid hosting, and use their hosting for this purpose. Many free hosting providers do not allow the storage of files for non-website-related use.

Content caching

Content providers who potentially encounter bandwidth congestion issues may use services specialized in distributing cached or static content. It is the case for companies with a major Internet presence.

Storage

Most online file storage services offer space on a per-gigabyte

Gigabyte

Gigabyte is an SI prefix-multiple of the unit byte for Computer data storage. Since the giga- prefix means 109, gigabyte means 1,000,000,000 bytes ....
basis, and sometimes include a bandwidth cost component as well. Usually these will be charged monthly or yearly. Some companies do offer the service for free, relying on advertising revenue. Some hosting services do not place any limit on how much space your account can consume. Some services require a software download which makes files only available on computers which have that software installed, others allow users to retrieve files through any web browser. With the increased inbox space offered by webmail services, many users have started using their webmail service as an online drive. Some sites offer free unlimited file storage but have a limit on the file size.

Increasingly, organizations are recognizing the benefits of co-locating their mission-critical equipment within a data centre. Colocation is becoming increasingly popular because of the time and cost savings a company can realize as a result of using shared data centre infrastructure. Significant benefits of scale (large power and mechanical systems) result in large colocation facilities, typically 5,000-10,000 m² (50,000 to 100,000 square feet). With IT and communications facilities in safe, secure hands, telecommunications, Internet, ASP

Application service provider

An application service provider is a business that provides computer-based services to customers over a network. Software offered using an ASP model is also sometimes called On-demand software or software as a service ....
and content providers, as well as enterprises, enjoy less latency and the freedom to focus on their core business.

Additionally, customers reduce their traffic back-haul costs and free up their internal networks for other uses. Moreover, by outsourcing network traffic to a colocation service provider with greater bandwidth

Bandwidth (computing)

In computer networking and computer science, digital bandwidth, network bandwidth or just bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bit/s or multiples of it ....
capacity, web site access speeds should improve considerably.

Major types of colocation customers are:

Web commerce companies, who use the facilities for a safe environment and cost-effective, redundant connections to the Internet
Major enterprises, who use the facility for disaster avoidance, offsite data backup and business continuity
Telecommunication companies, who use the facilities to interexchange traffic with other telecommunications companies and access to potential clients

Most network access point

Network access point

The four Network Access Points were defined under the U.S. National Information Infrastructure document as transitional data communications facilities at which Network Service Providers would exchange traffic, in replacement of the publicly-financed NSFNet Internet backbone....
facilities provide colocation.

Services offered

Most colocation centres offer different types of services to customers ranging from dedicated suites/rooms or cages to smaller racks or partial racks. Some colocation centres also offer some degree of service level agreement

Service Level Agreement

A service level agreement is a part of a service contract where the level of service is formally defined. In practice, the term SLA is sometimes used to refer to the contracted delivery time or performance....
s to support a wide range of computer and network related services, for example, server reboots, hardware replacements and software updates.

There are a few key differences between a dedicated server and colocation servers. Dedicated servers tend to be owned and rented out, while a colocation server is one that the client owns.

Some colocation centres feature a "meet-me-room

Meet-me-room

A "meet me room" is a place within a colocation center where multiple telecommunications companies can physically connect to one another and exchange data without incurring local loop fees....
" where the different carriers housed in the centre can efficiently exchange data. Most peering

Peering

Peering is voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet data network for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the customers of each network....
points sit in colocation centres. These sites are often used for web hosting. Most colocation centres have high levels of physical security and multiple redundant power and humidity/air-conditioning systems.

Confusingly, one company can operate a colocation centre, another can provide the bandwidth, whereas a third company would rent a cage inside the centre, renting out racks to hosting providers which would rent the servers themselves to actual clients. Any and all of those companies will claim ownership of the facility and will feature photos and descriptions of it on their web sites. At the actual physical location various ID cards with various logos will be present, including those of the company that built/rents/owns the actual building.

File mirroring

In 2006, Sharebee

Sharebee

Sharebee is a "file upload distribution service" which allows users to upload files which are then Mirror to multiple one-click hosting sites....
started a new type of file hosting site, known as a file mirror, file distribution or file spreading engine. These services allow users to upload their file to the hosting servers. The user's file is then distributed to multiple web hosts without using the user's bandwidth. For more information, see Mirror (computing)

Mirror (computing)

In computing, a mirror is an exact copy of a data set. On the Internet, a mirror site is an exact copy of another Internet site.Mirror sites are most commonly used to provide multiple sources of the same information, and are of particular value as a way of providing reliable access to large downloads....
.

One-click hosting

One-click hosting generally describes web service

Web service

A Web service is defined by the W3C as "a software system designed to support interoperability Machine to Machine interaction over a computer network"....
s that allow internet

Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
users to easily upload one or more files from their hard drives (or from a remote location) onto the one-click host's server

Server (computing)

A server is a computer program that provides services to other computer programs , in the same or other computer. The physical computer that runs a server program is also often referred to as server....
free of charge.

Most such services simply return a URL

Uniform Resource Locator

In Information technology, a Uniform Resource Locator is a type of Uniform Resource Identifier that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it....
which can be given to other people, who can then fetch the file later on. As of 2005 these sites have drastically increased in popularity, and subsequently, many of the smaller, less efficient sites have failed. Many internet forum

Internet forum

An , or 'message board', is an online discussion site. It is the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board, and a technological evolution of the dialup bulletin board system....
s exist in order to share such links; this type of file sharing

File sharing

File sharing is a method of distributing electronically stored information such as computer programs and digital media. File sharing can be implemented in a variety of storage and distribution models....
has, to a degree, taken over from P2P

Peer-to-peer

A peer-to-peer computer network uses diverse connectivity between participants in a network and the cumulative bandwidth of network participants rather than conventional centralized resources where a relatively low number of Server s provide the core value to a service or application....
filesharing services.

The sites make money through advertising or charging for premium services such as increased downloading capacity, removing any wait restrictions the site may have or prolonging how long uploaded files remain on the site. Some sites implement a CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA

A CAPTCHA or Captcha is a type of challenge-response authentication test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer....
to prevent automated downloading.

Comparison of notable file hosting services

The table below presents a comparison of notable file hosting services used for file sharing

File sharing

Web Host	Language	Storage size	Max. file size	Direct access	Traffic/bandwidth limit	File expiration	Misc. notes	Remote Uploading?	Ability to delete files?	Table-entries (Added or Revised) Date (YYYY-MM-DD)
ADrive ADrive Adrive.com is a website that offers data storage space....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...	50 GB (free), 50 GB - 1+ TB (non-free)	2 GB		none for paid users, 1 TB sharing limit for free accounts	No expiration for paid accounts, Public file expiration after 14 days for free accounts-resharing possible	Offers ADrive Desktop client for PC, Mac, Linux for automatic backups. FTP/WebDAV access, geographically diverse backup. No Ads for Paid users.			2009-02-16
Live Mesh Live Mesh Live Mesh is a data synchronization system from Microsoft that allows files, folders and other data to be shared and synchronized across multiple devices....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...		?		none	none	Synchronizes files between PC, Mac, and Mobile devices. Developer platform in CTP will allow sync for any feed based data across user devices via REST/Atom protocol.			2008-12-4
Dropbox Dropbox (storage provider) Dropbox is a File hosting service operated by Evenflow, Inc. The service enables users to store and sync files online and between computers. Dropbox has a cross-platform client that enables users to drop any file into a Dropbox folder that is then synced to the web and the users' other computers with the Dropbox client....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...		Unlimited (via client application), 350 MB (via web interface)				Primarily as backupservice but websharing possible.			2008-10-30
Box.net Box.net Box.net is an online file system that allows users to store, access and share files remotely. Its services include online storage, file hosting, and file sharing....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...	1 GB (free), 5-15 GB (non-free)			10 GB (free), Unlimited (non-free)		1 GB (free), 5GB-15GB+ (non-free)
FileFront FileFront FileFront is a computer game and video game download service that provides patch es, game demo, mod ifications and other user generated game related content....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...		?			6 months of inactivity	Premium advert-free service available via FastPass. Limited to video gaming files.
Files.Mail.ru Mail.ru Mail.ru is the largest free e-mail service of the Runet. The company started to operate under its present name on October 16, 2001. Before that time its brand name was owned by Port.ru....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...		?		no limit	30 days	Storage size is 10GB per user after sign up.			2008-09-17
MagicVortex MagicVortex MagicVortex is an Internet-based file transfer service. It is a hosted solution intended to simulate a person-to-person transmission of any type of file up to 2 GB in size, depending on the subscription level....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...	2 GB	2 GB (subscription)		none	7 or 14 days based on subscription	Peer-to-peer file transfer service; offers free Windows desktop client with resumption of interrupted transfers, transfer pausing, & live data streaming			2009-03-09
MediaFire MediaFire MediaFire is a free file and image one-click hosting located in Harris County, Texas, USA. It has received much attention because it has rather few limitations for users without an account compared to many other file hosters....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...	Unlimited	100 MB Megabyte Megabyte is a SI prefix-multiple of the unit byte for digital information computer storage or transmission and is equal to 106 bytes.... (free), 10 GB Gigabyte Gigabyte is an SI prefix-multiple of the unit byte for Computer data storage. Since the giga- prefix means 109, gigabyte means 1,000,000,000 bytes .... (non-free)		none	No expiration for paid accounts. 60 days of inactivity (i.e. no login to your account) / 30 days of inactivity (i.e. files accessed)	Resuming of interrupted downloads possible.	Only for pro users		2009-02-21
Megaupload Megaupload Megaupload is an international one-click hosting website driven by Megaupload Limited, Hong Kong, available in 18 languages....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa... , DE German language German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union.... , FR French language French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries.... , IT Italian language Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands.... , ...	50 GB (free), 1 TB (non-free)	1024 MB Megabyte Megabyte is a SI prefix-multiple of the unit byte for digital information computer storage or transmission and is equal to 106 bytes.... (non-paying users), no size limit (premium users)	, CAPTCHA CAPTCHA A CAPTCHA or Captcha is a type of challenge-response authentication test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer.... , wait 45 s (25 s with free registration)	Traffic limit, no parallel downloads (non-paying users), unlimited downloads (premium users)	90 days of inactivity for free users	For users with a cost-free account the waiting time is 25 s and the file expiration period is 90 days of inactivity. Less restrictions for premium accounts. Premium accounts can store up to 1 TB.	Only for premium users		2008-12-26
RapidShare RapidShare RapidShare is a Germany-owned one-click hosting pay- and free-service website that operates from Switzerland and is financed by the subscriptions of paying users....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa... /DE German language German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....	500 GB (premium users)		, waiting time (depends on file size)	bandwidth limited to 500 kbit/s (non-paying users), a premium account allows the download of 2.66 GB per day	90 days of inactivity (non-paying users), none (premium users)	No captchas anymore for non-paying users, but severely limited bandwidth.	50 running jobs at a time for Free & premium users		2008-12-26
Amazon S3 Amazon S3 Amazon S3 is an online storage web service offered by Amazon Web Services. Amazon S3 provides unlimited storage through a simple web services interface....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...	Unlimited -uses Amazon S3	5GB file size per bucket in S3, some vendors such as SecoBackup support over 5GB files		Amazon S3 limits	None, pay for storage each month				2009-01-27
SendSpace SendSpace Sendspace is a file transfer network. It offers temporary file hosting to enable users to send and receive large files that are too big for email attachments....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...	-				21 days of inactivity		SendSpace Wizard
SoundCloud SoundCloud SoundCloud is a online music online community where users can upload audio files in any common file type and any size on to their profile. The prio target is musicians, labels and music producers....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...	Unlimited	?			No	Music file hosting only. Free accounts are limited to 5 tracks/month.	through API		2008-11-28
SteekR Steek (brand) Steek provides integrated online multimedia data storage, file sharing, and automated backup services to Telecom operators, ISPs and portals. Multimedia data storage as Value-added service enhances end-user experience, and solidifies customer loyalty and satisfaction....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa... , FR French language French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries.... , DE German language German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union.... , IT Italian language Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands.... , BR Portuguese language Portuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and Portugal. It is derived from the Latin language spoken by the Romanization Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago....		?		none	none	Total storage space limited to 1 GB for non-paying users.	SteekR DriveDrive
YouSendIt YouSendIt YouSendIt is a web-based pseudo-Software as a service digital content delivery service provided by YouSendIt, Inc. It lets users send, receive and track files on-demand....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...	up to 6 GB (non free)			100 downloads per file for free registered (YouSendIt Lite) users. 3 downloads for unregistered users.	7 days
Wuala Wuala Wuala is a Online storage that allows Microsoft Windows, Linux and Macintosh users to save files online.Its interface is similar to a File_manager and besides the common file operations it allows the user to easily share his files with friends, in groups or with the rest of the world....	EN English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa... /DE German language German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union.... /PT Portuguese language Portuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and Portugal. It is derived from the Latin language spoken by the Romanization Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago.... /FR French language French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries.... ...	1 GB	none		none	none	You can get unlimited space for free by trading storage. Has a strong Social Network component.			2009-01-05
Web Host	Language	Storage size	Max. file size	Direct access	Traffic/bandwidth limit	File expiration	Misc. notes	Remote Uploading?	Ability to delete files?	Table-entries (Added or Revised) Date (YYYY-MM-DD)

File hosting service

Uses

Software file hosting

Personal file storage

Content caching

Storage

Services offered

File mirroring

One-click hosting

Comparison of notable file hosting services

See also

External links