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FAQ

Trading Storage

What is trading storage about? Do I have to trade?

Trading storage is a simple option to get additional online storage and to become a Pro user. You do not have to trade storage, it is optional.

What happens when I trade storage?

Wuala allows you to trade idle local disk space on your computer for online storage. For this you need to fulfill the requirement for trading: Your computer needs to be online for at least 17% of the time (4 hours a day). After you have met this requirement and have enabled trading storage, encrypted fragments will be stored on your computer in the data directory. Once you are trading storage, you will automatically become a Pro user.

How do I trade storage?

Go to Tools > Options > Trade Storage (Win/Linux) or Preferences > Trade Storage (Mac). Here you can see whether or not you fulfill the requirements to trade storage. For further instructions you can read our guide.

What are the requirements for trading storage?

There is only one requirement for trading storage:

Your computer has to be online for at least 17% of the time (4 hours per day).

When can I start trading storage?

As soon as you sign up, you can opt to trade. However, you may need to wait a few days until you reach the required uptime. Remember: Your computer needs to be online for at least 4 hours a day in average (about 17%).

Why can I not trade storage?

It is most likely that you do not fulfill the requirement for trading storage. This means that your computer is not online for at least 4 hours a day. In very rare cases, it may also be that your internet connection is not suitable for trading. (Cf. Why does my internet connection not allow me to trade storage?)

Why does my internet connection not allow me to trade storage?

If Wuala says that your connection is not suitable for trading storage, you might need to configure your firewall to accept incoming connections on the listed port or your router to forward incoming traffic on the listed port to your computer. You can find a manual here.

How is the amount of earned storage calculated?

Generally, your earned storage is calculated by multiplying your average online time with the limit you have set in the trade settings. So with 40% online time and a limit of 10 GB you get 4 GB of additional online storage. If you set your limit above 20 GB, the amount of storage you can earn is also limited by the amount of storage you would earn if your limit was set to 10 times the actually stored data on your computer. So if you set your limit to 100 GB, but only 4 GB of data has been stored on your computer, your earned storage is calculated by multiplying the online time with 40 GB instead of 100 GB, for example 40% * 10 * 4GB = 16GB. In other words, setting a very high limit has no effect until it has actually been used by at least 10%.

What happens to my data if my earned storage decreases again?

If your average online-time decreases or you decrease the limit of how much Wuala is allowed to trade, your earned storage decreases. This way you could end up with less online storage than the amount of data you have stored in Wuala. For example, you might have stored 6 GB of data. Then, your average online time might decrease such that you don’t have 7 GB of storage any more, but only 5 GB. In that case, you would have stored more than you are allowed to. If this is the case, you can still access your data, however, you cannot store additional files. Please note: If you don't react, we will reserve the right to block part of your files or to even delete part of your files, after informing you several times.

What happens when multiple users trade storage on the same computer?

If multiple users activate the "trade storage" option on the same computer, the storage earned by this computer will be divided evenly among these users.

What if I enable “trading storage” and a fragment of an illegal file is stored on my computer?

Individual fragment are just meaningless bits and bytes as long as one does not know the encryption key, reassembly plan, and the other fragments. Much more important than on which computers individual fragments of a legally questionable file happen to be stored are the questions about who has stored the file into Wuala, who has this file been shared with and who has accessed it.

I trade storage. Will I become a Pro user?

Yes. By trading storage, you’re automatically a pro member with additional key features: backup and file versioning.

I have Wuala installed on multiple computers. How does this affect my storage?

If you enable trading storage on multiple computers, the storage you earn will add up. For example: you can get 20 GB by earning 15 GB from one computer and 5 GB from another computer.

I have problems with trading storage!

Please contact us. We're glad to help!

Can I earn money by trading storage and then selling it?

No, that's currently not possible. This would make sense only once people have earned vast amounts of storage that they don’t need for themselves. We will keep looking at this option in the long run.

I don't want to trade nor buy. What now?

Then you can simply use the 1 GB that is provided by us. There’s absolutely no obligation to trade or to buy.

I'm currently trading storage. However, I'm going on vacation and will have to shut down my computer. What now?

Your online storage will decrease. See here for further details.

Why is the amount of earned storage increasing only slowly?

How much storage you earn depends on your average online time and on the amount of data that has been stored on your computer. How quickly data will be stored on your computer depends on the speed of your connection and the quality of your connection (Cf. Connection types).

What does my connection type mean?

You can receive data only if your computer is reachable, i.e. only if other computers can connect to you. The easier your computer is reachable, the faster you receive data for trading storage and the faster you earn storage. There are four levels of reachability in Wuala:

Connection type A: Full reachablility: Other computers can directly connect with you. If you are fully reachable, other computers with Wuala can connect to you easily and you receive data quickly. In most home settings, you have to enable port forwarding (link) on you router to get full reachability.
Connection type B: Limited reachability: Not all other computers can communicate with you. In consequence, you will receive data slower than with full reachability. Therefore, your earned storage will increase more slowly.
Connection type C: Very limited reachablity: Only a small fraction of computers can connect with you. Thus, you will receive almost no data and your earned storage will increase very slowly.
Connection not suitable for trading: Wuala cannot send and receive UDP packets. Most likely, you are behind a restrictive firewall blocking UDP traffic.

How can I improve my connection to earn more storage?

You can attain full reachability and receive data more quickly when your router has port forwarding enabled. You have to configure your router in a way that it forwards UDP packets arriving at the Wuala port to the computer where Wuala is running. Have a look at the following resources:

Portforward: Provides a description to setup port forwarding for many types of routers.
Routerpasswords: Default passwords to log in to your router.

Which IP-Port does Wuala use when trading storage?

In order for you to trade storage, your system needs to accept incoming UDP-connections on the IP-Port Wuala is using. Wuala does not use a standard port, instead it chooses a random port when starting Wuala for the first time. If you want to use a specific port, you may do so. Go to Tools > Options > Connection (Win/Linux) or Wuala > Preferences > Connection (Mac) and edit the field 'Local Port'. Please restart Wuala after having adjusted the settings.