5,955,338 photos are privately shared by PixVillage users

Photo Sharing Powered by P2P : Technical Explanations

Let's explain how PixVillage works. Ok, it's a bit complicated (even for us... ;-)), but we try to make this P2P photo sharing thing a bit clearer.

Simple Photo Sharing Principle

When you share your photos with several contacts, your photo sharing software sends to each of your authorized contact a copy of your shared photos. Then your contacts can easily browse the screen resolution copies. That's the idea of photo sharing. The main issue with photo sharing remains the process of copying every photo to each user's computer. If every photo is sent to each authorized user one by one (let's call it Simple Photo Sharing), several problems occur:

  • Photo sharing could take a while (100 photos for 10 users means 1000 copies!)
  • Photo sharing is limited by your upload bandwidth (usually far smaller than your download bandwidth...)
  • If the software is closed before the end of the photo sharing, only some of the authorized contacts would get the photos

Those are the limitations of many Simple Photo Sharing softwares...

Note that some people call P2P photo Sharing, the system described above because there is a direct transfer between two users (P2P) For us, however, it's not a REAL P2P system.

Photo Sharing Software Explanation - Simple photo Sharing

Why PixVillage Photo Sharing is more efficient ? Because it is really powered by P2P!

PixVillage uses a highly optimized P2P algorithm for copying (screen resolution) photos to every authorized user. It takes advantage of the network created by all the authorized users. Each authorized PixVillage client knows who wants the photos and can proceed to photo upload through other authorized clients. Photos are not sent from your computer to each authorized user, they are spread through the network: each authorized user contributes to this spreading which increases the efficiency of the network.

Photo Sharing Software Explanation - P2P photo Sharing

Advantages of PixVillage Photo Sharing

The PixVillage Photo Sharing Algorithm has several advantages :

  • Adaptation to users bandwidth : Most users have a larger bandwidth for download than for upload. With PixVillage, the photo spreading is automatically adapted to each user upload and download bandwidth.
  • Photo spreading acceleration : When a user shares photos with 10 connected users, only 1 photo upload from him is usually sufficient to spread the photos to the 10 other users (instead of 10 photo uploads with many photo sharing softwares...).
  • Photo availability increased : When a user is offline, his shared photos still remain available from any other connected user from his contact list.