Difference between revisions of "Dropbox Crawler"

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Personal cloud storage is becoming more and more popular - Dropbox is certainly the best known example. Cloud storage already generates a huge amount of Internet traffic. Because of that, understanding how people interact with such applications is essential for designing efficient cloud storage systems.
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Personal cloud storage is becoming more and more popular, with Dropbox certainly being the best known example. It generates a huge amount of Internet traffic, but how does it works? How is it used? What are the possible improvements?
  
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We have been doing research on the usage of Dropbox ([http://eprints.eemcs.utwente.nl/22286/01/imc140-drago.pdf see our results here]). As a next step, we need to know what type of files people store in the service. This would allow us to understand the impact of some technologies on the system performance and on network traffic, among other things. For that, we need volunteers to provide us basic statistics (size, type etc) about files stored in their folders.  
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In this experiment, we collected basic statistics of what files are stored in Dropbox folders.
  
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== Be part of the crowd ==
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== Datasets ==
  
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All you need to do is run a Java application at your PC. This application will read your Dropbox folder, calculate basic statistics, show everything to your approval and, '''only after that''', send the statistics to us.
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Download our datasets:
  
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*  Most people will be able to run the application '''by clicking here'''
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{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center; width: 400px; height: 40px;"
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|-
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! scope="col" | Name
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! scope="col" | File Size
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! scope="col" | Volunteers
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|-
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! scope="row" | [http://traces.simpleweb.org/dropbox/crawler/dropbox_crawler.tar.gz Crawler Dataset]
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| 219M || 333
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|}
  
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* In case your browser does not support that, you can '''download the package and run it''': Just double click on it!
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Some results derived from these data can be found in [http://eprints.eemcs.utwente.nl/24136/01/2013_drago_thesis.pdf here].
  
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In particular, the figures presented in Sect. 5.3 of the linked document are obtained using the
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scripts available in the folder "scripts" inside the tarball.
  
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== What will be captured? ==
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== How our data collection work? ==
  
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For each file/folder in your Dropbox, the program will collect:  
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* It scans Dropbox folders
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* Calculates basic statistics
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* Shows what has been collected for approval
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* Sends the statistics to us
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== What has been logged? ==
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For each file/folder in a Dropbox, the program collects:
 
<pre>
 
<pre>
 
* Size in bytes
 
* Size in bytes
 
* Last modification time
 
* Last modification time
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* Mime type found by this Java [http://sourceforge.net/projects/mime-util/ Mime Type Detection Utility]
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* Mime type of the file
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* File extension - the sub-string after the last "." on the file name
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* File extension
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* Hash (MD5) of both initial and final 8 bytes of the file
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* MD5 Hash of both initial and final 8 kbytes of the file
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* Hash (MD5) of the file name
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* MD5 Hash of the file name/path
 
</pre>
 
</pre>
  
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The program will also send to us:  
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The program also sends to us:
 
<pre>
 
<pre>
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* Hash (MD5) of your Dropbox configuration files (or a hash of your MAC address if we cannot read the former)
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* MD5 Hash of Dropbox configuration files (or MAC address if we cannot read the former)
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* Hash (MD5) of the path of your Dropbox home folder
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* MD5 Hash of the path of your Dropbox home folder
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* Your IP address
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* Your IP address and operating system version
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* Error logs, in case something goes wrong during the data collection
 
</pre>
 
</pre>
  
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Collected information is sent via plain HTTP to a centralized collection server.
  
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== How will we use this information? ==
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== Client source code ==
  
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We ensure that:
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Download the source code by clicking [http://www.simpleweb.org/dropbox/source_python.zip here] for the native versions (you will need Python 2.7 and [http://www.pyinstaller.org/ PyInstaller] for building these versions), or [http://www.simpleweb.org/dropbox/source_java.zip here] for the Java version.
  
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All data we collect are anonymized.
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== More information ==
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We do not copy any file content.
 
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We do not collect any personal information and file/dir names.
 
  
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We also will make our data publicity in a near future. Thus, anyone will be able to use this important data source.
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The dataset in this page is used in the following publications:
  
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  @phdthesis{drago_understanding_2013,
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          author      = {Idilio Drago},
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          title        = {Understanding and Monitoring Cloud Services},
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          school      = {University of Twente},
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          url          = {<nowiki>\url{http://eprints.eemcs.utwente.nl/24136/</nowiki>}},
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          year        = {2013},
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  },
  
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== What this program will NOT do? ==
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  @inproceedings{drago_caracterizacao_2013,
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          author      = {Idilio Drago and Alex Borges Vieira and Ana Paula Couto da Silva},
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          title        = {Caracteriza{\c c}{\~a}o dos Arquivos Armazenados no Dropbox},
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          booktitle    = {Anais do Workshop de Redes {P2P}, Din{\^a}micas, Sociais e Orientadas a Conte{\'u}do},
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          series      = <nowiki>{{WP2P+}}</nowiki>,
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          pages        = {109--114},
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          year        = {2013},
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  },
  
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* Copy any file, folder our of your computer
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More information about our previous work is found on these papers:
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* Copy any other information than what is stated above
 
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* Install or store anything in your computer
 
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You can also take a look on the source code of the program if you have doubts about the program.
 
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== Client source code ==
 
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Download the source code by clicking [here here]. You can compile the project using the [http://ant.apache.org/ ant] tool, or any Java IDE (we use [http://netbeans.org/ NetBeans] v7.2.1)
 
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== More information ==
 
  
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* You can find more information about our work on this paper:  
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* [http://eprints.eemcs.utwente.nl/22286/01/imc140-drago.pdf '''Drago, I. and Mellia, M. and Munafò, M. M. and Sperotto, A. and Sadre, R. and Pras, A. (2012) Inside Dropbox: Understanding Personal Cloud Storage Services. Proceedings of the 12th ACM Internet Measurement Conference - IMC'12, Boston, Nov. 2012''']
  
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[http://eprints.eemcs.utwente.nl/22286/01/imc140-drago.pdf '''Drago, I. and Mellia, M. and Munafò, M. M. and Sperotto, A. and Sadre, R. and Pras, A. (2012) Inside Dropbox: Understanding Personal Cloud Storage Services. Proceedings of the 12th ACM Internet Measurement Conference - IMC'12, Boston, Nov. 2012''']
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* [http://eprints.eemcs.utwente.nl/23674/01/cloud_storage.pdf '''Drago, I. and Bocchi, E. and Mellia, M. and Slatman, H. and Pras, A. (2013) Benchmarking personal cloud storage. In: Proceedings of the 13th ACM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC 2013, 23-25 Oct 2013, Barcelona, Spain. pp. 205-212.''']
  
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* [[Dropbox Traces|This page]] has more information about the data we used in our research so far.  
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* [[Dropbox Traces|This page]] and [[Cloud benchmarks | this page]] have more traces we used in other papers.
  
 
== External Links ==
 
== External Links ==
  
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These institutes are running this research:  
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These institutes involved in this research:
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* [http://www.utwente.nl/ewi/dacs/ DACS - University of Twente]
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* [http://www.utwente.nl/ewi/dacs/ DACS - University of Twente] - Contact: Idilio Drago - idilio.drago@polito.it
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* [http://www.tlc-networks.polito.it/ Telecommunication Networks Group - Politecnico di Torino]
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* [http://www.ufjf.br/portal/ Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora] Contact: Alex Vieira - alex.borges@ufjf.edu.br
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* [http://www.ufjf.br/portal/ Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora]
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* [http://www.tlc-networks.polito.it/ Telecommunication Networks Group - Politecnico di Torino] - Marco Mellia - mellia@tlc.polito.it

Latest revision as of 09:44, 9 May 2014

Personal cloud storage is becoming more and more popular, with Dropbox certainly being the best known example. It generates a huge amount of Internet traffic, but how does it works? How is it used? What are the possible improvements?

In this experiment, we collected basic statistics of what files are stored in Dropbox folders.

Datasets

Download our datasets:

Name File Size Volunteers
Crawler Dataset 219M 333

Some results derived from these data can be found in here.

In particular, the figures presented in Sect. 5.3 of the linked document are obtained using the scripts available in the folder "scripts" inside the tarball.

How our data collection work?

  • It scans Dropbox folders
  • Calculates basic statistics
  • Shows what has been collected for approval
  • Sends the statistics to us

What has been logged?

For each file/folder in a Dropbox, the program collects: 

* Size in bytes
* Last modification time
* Mime type of the file
* File extension
* MD5 Hash of both initial and final 8 kbytes of the file
* MD5 Hash of the file name/path

The program also sends to us: 

* MD5 Hash of Dropbox configuration files (or MAC address if we cannot read the former)
* MD5 Hash of the path of your Dropbox home folder
* Your IP address and operating system version
* Error logs, in case something goes wrong during the data collection

Collected information is sent via plain HTTP to a centralized collection server.

Client source code

Download the source code by clicking here for the native versions (you will need Python 2.7 and PyInstaller for building these versions), or here for the Java version.

More information

The dataset in this page is used in the following publications: 

 @phdthesis{drago_understanding_2013,
         author       = {Idilio Drago},
         title        = {Understanding and Monitoring Cloud Services},
         school       = {University of Twente},
         url          = {\url{http://eprints.eemcs.utwente.nl/24136/}},
         year         = {2013},
 },

 @inproceedings{drago_caracterizacao_2013,
         author       = {Idilio Drago and Alex Borges Vieira and Ana Paula Couto da Silva},
         title        = {Caracteriza{\c c}{\~a}o dos Arquivos Armazenados no Dropbox},
         booktitle    = {Anais do Workshop de Redes {P2P}, Din{\^a}micas, Sociais e Orientadas a Conte{\'u}do},
         series       = {{WP2P+}},
         pages        = {109--114},
         year         = {2013},
 },

More information about our previous work is found on these papers:

External Links

These institutes involved in this research:

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