SHARED COMMUNITY STORAGE NETWORK
7 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A hardware and/or software facility for durably and securely storing data within a shared community storage network. A user may have a storage device that they intend to share with others in the network. All or a portion of the storage device is registered with the community storage network as a storage node. Once registered with the network, third party data may be stored on the storage node and remotely accessed by third parties. In addition, data stored on the storage device by the user may be stored in the shared community storage network by encrypting the data, adding redundancy, and distributing it to other storage nodes within the storage network. Data that is stored in the storage network is accessible to the user even if their storage device is inaccessible or fails.
29 Citations
71 Claims
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1-48. -48. (canceled)
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49. A system comprising:
a plurality of control devices that manage storage locations across a plurality of unaffiliated storage devices in order to provide a reliable network-accessible storage service, wherein the plurality of control devices are operated in a centralized and secure location and configured to; receive registration requests from unaffiliated storage devices hosted by geographically-dispersed entities, each registration request offering to associate an unaffiliated storage device with the network-accessible storage service, the plurality of unaffiliated storage devices associated under terms in which there is no service level guarantee of each of the plurality of unaffiliated storage devices; register the unaffiliated storage devices with the network-accessible storage service; identify available storage space on each of the registered storage devices; and offer access to the identified storage space as a storage service to third parties, the identified storage space offered under terms having a service level guarantee for the storage service. - View Dependent Claims (50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61)
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62. A method of constructing a reliable network-accessible storage service using a plurality of unaffiliated storage devices, the method comprising:
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managing, by a control device, storage locations across a plurality of unaffiliated storage devices hosted by geographically-dispersed entities in order to provide the reliable network-accessible storage service, wherein the control device is operated in a centralized and secure location; receiving, by the control device, registration requests from unaffiliated storage devices, each registration request offering to associate an unaffiliated storage device with the network-accessible storage service, the plurality of unaffiliated storage devices associated under terms in which there is no service level guarantee of each of the plurality of unaffiliated storage devices; registering, by the control device, the unaffiliated storage devices with the network-accessible storage service; identifying, by the control device, available storage space on each of the registered storage devices; and offering, by the control device, access to the identified storage space under terms having a service level guarantee for the storage service. - View Dependent Claims (63, 64, 65, 66)
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67. A computer-readable storage device encoded with instructions that, when executed by a control device, cause the control device to construct a reliable network-accessible storage service using a plurality of unaffiliated storage devices, the computer-readable storage device comprising:
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instructions to manage storage locations across a plurality of unaffiliated storage devices hosted by geographically-dispersed entities to provide the reliable network-accessible storage service, wherein the control device is operated in a centralized and secure location; instructions to receive registration requests from unaffiliated storage devices, each registration request offering to associate an unaffiliated storage device with the network-accessible storage service, the plurality of unaffiliated storage devices associated under terms in which there is no service level guarantee of each of the plurality of unaffiliated storage devices; instructions to register the unaffiliated storage devices with the network-accessible storage service; instructions to identify available storage space on each of the registered storage devices; and instructions to offer access to the identified storage space as a storage service to third parties, the identified storage space offered under terms having a service level guarantee for the storage service. - View Dependent Claims (68, 69, 70, 71)
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Specification