FileSyncer: Design, Implementation, and Performance Evaluation

With the pervasiveness of information technology, one of the growing trends today is a phenomenon which can be termed one-user-to-many-computing-devices. In many cases, the need to manage information across multiple electronic devices and storage media arises. The challenge therefore is finding a file synchronization system that can effectively replicate files across these different devices. This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of FileSyncer, a rapid and efficient file synchronization tool that, in addition to the traditional synchronization capabilities, supports manual update selection and mechanism to revert a synchronization process back to the last previous state. The system employs last modified time, file size and CRC checksum for update detection and to ensure integrity of synchronized files. The synchronization times of the system for files of different sizes were compared with those of four existing file synchronization systems. Results showed increased efficiency in terms of time taken by FileSyncer to complete a synchronization operation with increase in file size compared to the other systems. In the future, we plan to release FileSyncer to the open source community for further development.