I can't believe how many of you guys have missed the point.
I don't plan on using the service, I don't have a need for it, but 90-95% of all the replies here compaining about it have completely misunderstood the idea.
Let me try and explain why most the complaints are irrelevant:
#1 - "it's only 2gb, and for R49 that's ridiculous!!"
This is NOT bandwidth. This is storage space. You can go ahead and download 3Tb of torrents if you want. If you go and set 5 episodes of a tv series at 350mb each you will be using up just over 1.7gb of your 2gb DISK SPACE. But once they done you download at full speed on your local adsl account to your pc. Once downloaded delete off the server and set another 5 episodes to download. Rinse and repeat. If you plan on downloading 6gb torrent files you're going to need to get a bigger account as a 2gb will not fit a 6gb file.
#2 - "just download torrents yourself / buy a second pc to do torrents 24/7".
There's 2 problems to this.
First, because torrents rely on uploads and not just downloads, if you choose to download a 350mb file, you wont spend 350mb on your cap, you'll use anywhere from 400-800mb depending on how long you leave it seeding. Now scale that up, let's say you want 20gb of torrents. You're going to spend probably 35-50Gb of cap to get it. Using the service listed here you'll only spend 20gb to download it direct on http.
Secondly, our upload speeds on our adsl are extremely low. This means that getting your ratios to 1:1 are nearly impossible. Getting high ratios also means double bandwidth costs compared to downloading only.
This does largely depend on what sort of ratios are given by downstorm of course, so far I cannot see any details regarding this.
Actually, something else to consider with our out-of-control electricity prices is that leaving a pc on 24/7 does add to your electricity bill, more than R49/month.
With regards to the security issues raised, in the end whether you download torrents directly or via a service like this, the risk is the same if you're downloading illegal torrents - yes there are legal torrents, lots infact
I think this is a great service to be offering and their costs for storage space are very reasonable considering the bandwidth is 100% free.
I don't plan on using the service, I don't have a need for it, but 90-95% of all the replies here compaining about it have completely misunderstood the idea.
Let me try and explain why most the complaints are irrelevant:
#1 - "it's only 2gb, and for R49 that's ridiculous!!"
This is NOT bandwidth. This is storage space. You can go ahead and download 3Tb of torrents if you want. If you go and set 5 episodes of a tv series at 350mb each you will be using up just over 1.7gb of your 2gb DISK SPACE. But once they done you download at full speed on your local adsl account to your pc. Once downloaded delete off the server and set another 5 episodes to download. Rinse and repeat. If you plan on downloading 6gb torrent files you're going to need to get a bigger account as a 2gb will not fit a 6gb file.
#2 - "just download torrents yourself / buy a second pc to do torrents 24/7".
There's 2 problems to this.
First, because torrents rely on uploads and not just downloads, if you choose to download a 350mb file, you wont spend 350mb on your cap, you'll use anywhere from 400-800mb depending on how long you leave it seeding. Now scale that up, let's say you want 20gb of torrents. You're going to spend probably 35-50Gb of cap to get it. Using the service listed here you'll only spend 20gb to download it direct on http.
Secondly, our upload speeds on our adsl are extremely low. This means that getting your ratios to 1:1 are nearly impossible. Getting high ratios also means double bandwidth costs compared to downloading only.
This does largely depend on what sort of ratios are given by downstorm of course, so far I cannot see any details regarding this.
Actually, something else to consider with our out-of-control electricity prices is that leaving a pc on 24/7 does add to your electricity bill, more than R49/month.
With regards to the security issues raised, in the end whether you download torrents directly or via a service like this, the risk is the same if you're downloading illegal torrents - yes there are legal torrents, lots infact
I think this is a great service to be offering and their costs for storage space are very reasonable considering the bandwidth is 100% free.