You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Maximum download and upload speeds
I'm setting up a new computer and syncing my dropbox business account to it. The internet connection is great on fiber optic cable (1500MB/s) but my download speeds on dropbox are about 24MB/sec Wha...
That won't do you any good. There are so many things that affect speed that you could have two people with an identical setup and still have wildly different speeds. Your computer, your local network, your ISP, the route your traffic takes to get to Dropbox, the Dropbox network and servers, congestion along any part of the route to Dropbox, throttling by your ISP (very common), failures along the route that cause your traffic to take another path, etc.
Simply put, there is no expected speed. You get whatever speed you're capable of given all the factors above, and many others.
That doesn't help me much - I can't believe downloads can be this slow. I've got a fast computer and just about the fastest internet that you can get and I'm still only getting 20MB/s. What are the fastest speeds other people are getting?
Lusil
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox Staff- Rich
Super User II
When you're looking at the numbers, make sure you're comparing apples to apples, and not oranges.
The speed from your ISP is likely listed in Kb/s or Mb/s; megabits. The speeds reported by Dropbox are in KB/s or MB/s; bytes. You need to do the conversion before you can simply compare them.
Also, the speed you see from Dropbox isn't simply the transfer speed of the data. Each file that you upload is hashed, compressed, then transferred, encrypted, and stored on the Dropbox servers. That entire process is included in the aggregate speed that's displayed in the Dropbox sync status. In other words, the speed reported by Dropbox is not just a transfer speed, but the speed at which the entire process is being completed. The actual transfer speed is higher, but when you factor in the entire process, it appears lower.
I found that if I turn my VPN on, then my transfer rates get a bit better. They jump from 20MB/s to 70MB/s so I my ISP Bell Canada seems to be throttling dropbox traffic. Which is odd because they don't throttle Google drive.
I think it would be good to list what kind of speeds people get with different setups just so that they know the range and what to expect.
On a 12 Core Powermac with 950Mbps download speed I get 70MB/s
Everyone share your stats so we can know better what to expect.
- Rich
That won't do you any good. There are so many things that affect speed that you could have two people with an identical setup and still have wildly different speeds. Your computer, your local network, your ISP, the route your traffic takes to get to Dropbox, the Dropbox network and servers, congestion along any part of the route to Dropbox, throttling by your ISP (very common), failures along the route that cause your traffic to take another path, etc.
Simply put, there is no expected speed. You get whatever speed you're capable of given all the factors above, and many others.
