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
rusdom
3 years agoCollaborator | Level 9
Can you force Dropbox to use more bandwidth?
Curious if there's a way anyone has found to get Dropbox to use more of your available bandwidth when syncing files. I have gig speed internet, but consistently the fastest Dropbox syncing speeds I c...
- 3 years ago
rusdom wrote:
I have gig speed internet, but consistently the fastest Dropbox syncing speeds I can get are max 10-20 mb/s. I've tested my internet speeds with a number of other methods, and found my overall speeds to consistently be 500-1,000 mb/s
While most ISPs and speed test sites display their results in bits, the speeds reported by Dropbox are in Bytes. Be sure to do the conversion before comparing. Your 20MB/s transfer speed as reported by Dropbox is approximately 160Mb/s.
Also, 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 MB/s 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. It can't be directly compared to a download speed from other sites/services.
And finally, regarding your speed test, unless you specify otherwise, your speed test will be run to a local server (speed test sites always select a local server by default). For a more accurate result pick one close to the Dropbox servers which are in San Francisco. Also remember that some ISPs have been known to provide priority speeds when performing speed tests.
Rich
Super User II
rusdom wrote:
I have gig speed internet, but consistently the fastest Dropbox syncing speeds I can get are max 10-20 mb/s. I've tested my internet speeds with a number of other methods, and found my overall speeds to consistently be 500-1,000 mb/s
While most ISPs and speed test sites display their results in bits, the speeds reported by Dropbox are in Bytes. Be sure to do the conversion before comparing. Your 20MB/s transfer speed as reported by Dropbox is approximately 160Mb/s.
Also, 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 MB/s 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. It can't be directly compared to a download speed from other sites/services.
And finally, regarding your speed test, unless you specify otherwise, your speed test will be run to a local server (speed test sites always select a local server by default). For a more accurate result pick one close to the Dropbox servers which are in San Francisco. Also remember that some ISPs have been known to provide priority speeds when performing speed tests.
About Settings and Preferences
The Dropbox Community is here to help if you have questions about your account settings and preferences. Learn and share advice with members.
Need more support
If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.
For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.
If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!