There are several ways that people might want to use Tahoe:

(This Wiki page was originally inspired by [http://allmydata.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2007-June/000022.html this discussion on the tahoe-dev list])

 * ''friendnet'': a group of friends who want to share backup and file-sharing
 * ''sysadmin'': a sysadmin wants to backup data onto a few of his own server
 * ''hivecache'': a sysadmin wants to backup data onto hundreds of employee workstations

[[Image(http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/attachment/wiki/Doc/usecases.jpg?format=raw)]]

Use Cases
||__name__||__number of nodes__||__administrative domains__||__node capacity__||__node availability__||__churn__||
||''friendnet''||2-10||many trusted domains||mixed||it depends on the friends...||low||
||''sysadmin''||2-10||one domain||uniform||high||low||
||''hivecache''||10-1000||one domain, but not as well controlled||somewhat uniform||high||low||


more to come...

Others not yet entered into the table:

 * Allmydata, Inc. operating a storage grid on corporately owned servers

 * Allmydata, Inc. and its customers operating a storage grid including the
customer's computers

 * a large, diverse ecosystem of selfish or mutually suspicious people and organizations who want a storage service with extremely high reliability and availability