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Forum Discussion
Slow Upload & bandwidth settings ignored
Hi, I recently started to use dropbox again, but I do have a problem with the desktop app on windows. When I try to upload a file, I get ~1MB/s. My settings are set to "no limit" for both download an...
We have been in contract with our ISP now and it seems there really is a connection related problem. I guess it's a waiting game till they can solve it.
Thank you very much for the help though. Sadly it's nothing you or we can solve :/
Jay
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi Dominic13, thanks for posting today!
There is a possibility that a proxy, VPN, firewall, security software, or even ISP/router issues that could be restricting traffic to the following Dropbox domains.
Could you check each of these possibilities with your IT admin (as you mentioned this is a business connection) to see if this could be the case?
Keep me posted!
Hi Jay,
thank you for your reply. We did some more testing and could replicate the behaviour on both Windows 7 and Windows 10 clients. We also tested the webinterface as well as rclone on both Windows versions and linux (headless) without problems concerning the upload speed. The webinterface doesn't give us full speed, but still at least 2x as much as the desktop app does. rclone uploads with full speed as long as there are more than ~4-5 files.
There are no proxies or VPNs inbetween the clients and the outside in any production scenario. Firewall and security software have near to no impact on the real world speeds, which can be seen by the rclone results. There are no special traffic restrictions to any domains either, be dropbox or anything else.
I really do feel like it's a problem on our side, but I can't put my finger on it. A friend of mine has the exact same ISP&business contract and the same dropbox business subscription and zero problems with the desktop app. The sudden uptick in speed after changing the settings in the desktop app lets me think otherwise thought, so I'm really confused.
Any hints/tips/ideas are appreciated.
- Jay
The sync speed of the desktop app is also affected by the CPU of the machine, since it needs to process and hash files during the upload.
As you've already tried on another machine, there are two possibilities remaining, either network is still soemhow preventing the Dropbox desktop app from connecting correctly, while allow rclone to do so, or it's the machines themselves.
If at all possible, it might be worth testing with another machine which didn't have any issues elsewhere (such as your colleague's device) on this network, to see if the speed is affected. If it is, then the connection is the issue, if not, then it's machine related.
If you do get this chance, let me know.
I doubt the performance of the clients is the problem here. We already did the Windows tests on two different fairly powerful machines. The server we did the linux tests on is even more powerful. Additionally we tested everything with an 8core Mac Book Pro 2019 and had the same problem again.
The fact that rclone can do full speed even when using encrypted remotes on every single device we tested but the dropbox app can't is so confusing. I am not sure if it's the way the dropbox app handles uploads by maybe only uploading one at a time compared to multiple ones with rclone. All rclone tests have been done with 5 parallel uploads. Single file uploads with rclone aren't full speed either, but still faster than the dropbox app, albeit not by much.
