There are several ways that people might want to use Tahoe. We're not necessarily committed to satisfying all of these use cases -- these are just possibilities.

Use Cases

name	number of nodes	administrative domains	node capacity	node availability	churn
friendnet	2-10	many domains, but all trusted	mixed	mixed	low
proprietary grid -- 1x upload	2-30	one domain	uniform	high	low
proprietary grid -- p2p upload	2-50,000	one domain for servers, many for clients	uniform	high	low
hivecache	10-1000	one domain, but not as well controlled	somewhat uniform	high	low
Allmydata plus customers	10-10,000	many	mixed	mixed	medium
global grid	any	many	mixed	mixed	high

• friendnet: A group of friends want to share backup and files.
• proprietary grid -- 1x upload: A sysadmin, or Allmydata Inc. wants to backup data onto a set of servers. The data is uploaded to the servers over a streaming protocol such as HTTP (using the Web API).
• proprietary grid -- p2p upload: A sysadmin, or Allmydata Inc. wants to backup data onto a set of servers. The data is uploaded to the servers over the Tahoe distributed upload protocol.
• hivecache: A sysadmin wants to backup data onto hundreds of employee workstations.
• Allmydata plus customers: Allmydata, Inc. and its customers share a storage grid including the customer's computers.
• global grid: A large, diverse ecosystem of people and organizations who want a storage grid with extremely high reliability and availability.