Towards Network-level Efficiency for Cloud Storage Services

Cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive provide users with a convenient and reliable way to store and share data from anywhere, on any device, and at any time. The cornerstone of these services is the data synchronization (sync) operation which automatically maps the changes in users' local filesystems to the cloud via a series of network communications in a timely manner. If not designed properly, however, the tremendous amount of data sync traffic can potentially cause (financial) pains to both service providers and users. This paper addresses a simple yet critical question: Is the current data sync traffic of cloud storage services efficiently used? We first define a novel metric named TUE to quantify the Traffic Usage Efficiency of data synchronization. Based on both real-world traces and comprehensive experiments, we study and characterize the TUE of six widely used cloud storage services. Our results demonstrate that a considerable portion of the data sync traffic is in a sense wasteful, and can be effectively avoided or significantly reduced via carefully designed data sync mechanisms. All in all, our study of TUE of cloud storage services not only provides guidance for service providers to develop more efficient, traffic-economic services, but also helps users pick appropriate services that best fit their needs and budgets.