With the advent of affordable uncapped ADSL offerings in South Africa many broadband users became acutely aware of the impact of shaping on P2P and Torrent services.<\/p>\n
Shaping typically takes place during working hours, and takes aim at bandwidth intensive file shaping services like BitTorrent and Limewire.<\/p>\n
Many tech savvy individuals have been using innovative methods to bypass the impact of port prioritization and traffic shaping, including downloading files to servers based overseas and then using a standard HTTP download to move the file to their computer.<\/p>\n
This option typically required the user to invest in an international server, but a new service called DownStorm is aiming to change that.<\/p>\n
The DownStorm.co.za service allows subscribers to download their torrent files onto an international server connected to a 1 Gbps backbone, and when done they can download the torrent from the server using HTTP, effectively bypassing any shaping their ISP may implement.<\/p>\n
“Not only will you no longer have to wait ages for your torrent, you will also protect yourself, as no-one can see which torrents you download. Thus, DownStorm offers you an element of privacy that this world so dearly lacks,” said Downstorm founder Keoma Wright.<\/p>\n
Downstorm pricing starts at R49 for 2GB storage space, increasing to R189 for 20GB of storage. There are no bandwidth usage limits on any of the accounts. <\/p>\n
The different packages available are as follows:<\/p>\n
While the 2GB storage space on the entry level package is hardly enough for large file downloads, Wright explains that with the Auto Download feature being launched soon, a client will be able to queue a file larger than 2GB. <\/p>\n
“The system will download the file to the server, automatically download the file to the user’s PC, delete the file from their space, and then continue with another batch of files up to 2GB, until their full torrent is downloaded. Thus, effectively, a 2GB client will still be able to download files larger than 2GB,” says Wright.<\/p>\n
DownStorm International will officially be launched in June 2010.<\/p>\n