Dropbox not uploading/ uploading v slow

[jeanzbeanz]

I have dropbox installed on multiple devices and they all work fine, except it has suddenly stopped uploading on my windows laptop.

I moved a load of photos off my phone onto dropbox on my laptop last week and only a handful have uploaded.  The icon in my tray says it is syncing 405 files and has 36 minutes left.

It's definitely not a problem with my bandwidth and I have checked the settings to make sure that dropbox isn't set to a low upload speed.  

I have tried pausing sync and restarting, I have tried closing dropbox and re-opening.  I have also tried restarting my laptop and it uploaded 5 files then stopped again.

I am a pro user and have only used 50% of my available space.

Can anyone help?

[sherrod b.]

there was a person on here claiming to be an engineer and sported his B.S. and I dont mean his degree...he said, its the server side, because various providers with users in varied locations have slow speeds. Well I worked For at&t. You and I both are being throttled to painfully slow speeds. ALL the providers are doing it because a common user will never notice slow upload speeds. besides drop box, They also want to throttle upload speeds to people using various sites and apps...including roku, apple tv, fire tv etc. They want to assure the experience of uploading things to facebook, and instagram etc appear very fast. if you have a crapload of users going to, or logged onto those sites in your neighborhood, YOU TOO will not have good upload speeds using some other site. 

For example..Upload something to google drive? and you will see how far faster it is. They are not throttling google drive. I am not promoting GD however because they have a cap, and MyFreeAirBus doesnt have as low a cap, and for me, I sell music sounds, and want people to only have access to the file for 3 days before having to pay for it again. But they are several hours to upload 4 gigs. Im talking like 5 hours. AND NO...uploads were NEVER like this in the past.  Youre paying for certain speeds, but NO PROVIDER plans on giving it to you. keep in mind..all the providers are former Ma Bell companies. they are not about to compete with each other to their own detriment. 

I will give you an example. can you explain why IPTV, such as uverse and xfinity, has the ability to whip you 56 megs down over 2 pair or copper, but your Internet access is proportioned in trickling scale? because the tv is prioritized. The net isnt. Also...can you explain why you are being charged anything at all for that bundle phone you have? IP based phone? aka VOIP? a computer doesnt know the difference between you typing on a computer, playing a video game live, or using a mouse. yet the Phone...which is just as much a peripheral as the keyboard and mouse are, is being charged 30 dollars a month to have. why? because youre USED to paying a certain amount a month for a phone. Hence MagicJack, charging 19 a year? was troubling for the providers. so they simply state that if you have one, they wont trouble shoot your internet speed issues..etc.

the day wont come where there is class action for UPLOAD speeds because the new internet is really nothing more than a mess of people WATCHING the net. not CONTRIBUTING to it. they have now blocked internet radio stations except large money ones as of feb 2016. Soon there will be a licence required to upload content  and the FCC will be pushed by the cable providers ...siting copyright theft issues in the movie industry....and terrorism types and police videos being uploaded causing all sorts of bad things...they will use fear and the population will agree to it, for they are mostly non creative non content uploading people. they instead are facebook types...People that will believe anything they see because it has a quote below the image of a celebrity saying it. 

welcome to Internet 2.0 corporate america telling YOU what you are gonna watch.

[sherrod b.]

you will also notice that your upload speed will increase if youre ON the computer...uploading. Such as talking in this window....While typing, a long time? your painful upload will seem to move 50% faster than it was...again, the intent is to provide to OTHERS in your area and NOT YOU, if youre not doing things like what Im doing now...or uploading to facebook (watch how fast ANYTHING you upload is with them!!)  there are times I deliberately sit on facebook being ACTIVE just so my upload will provision for ME. due to cable and fiber providing companies STILL having "hub" locations where everyone is coming together in an area? they want to "turn YOU off and green light" another user. Listen folks...it is what it is. this is known by drop box, and anyone else of corporate america...but they are protecting the interests of the providers...pissing them off could mean your site being throttled to non usability and they KNOW this. 

[sherrod b.]

to show you what I mean...I started uploading on MyAirBridge, at 3 am, and went to bed, and the computer doesnt go to sleep either. And then I came here at 730 am and it was 60% ...while talking on this site for the last 30 minutes? its now at 80%!!! thats 20% jump so wait...if 4 hours brought me only60 % but in 30 to 40 minutes I have uploaded 20%...wait its 21% now...what does that tell you?

try leaving a long message here...while uploading and see the massive difference and you will see what I mean...ALL the providers..being ex ma bell companies (which is a term the facebook generation no longer knows what that means) they are all screwing us. 

[Jocelyn R.1]

@Sherrod

Not sure what you're trying to say here (I admit, didn't read everything your wrote!) but too bad for you if your ISP throttles your traffic.  It is illegal practice in my country and we get whatever the speed ISPs are advertising (even more is some cases).

You realize US represents less than 5% of the global population 😉

That being said... Dropbox is still WAY slower than GD (and probably other services like that)... Even with the "newest' client.

Cheers

[ANdrew D.50]

I have just had NBN install in Australia and boasts a tested upload speed of 40mb/s and yet dropbox is only uploading at 1,800 kb/s.

With a pro account this is massively disappointing and not acceptable.  It's also not compatible with my business that requires me to upload large amounts of data, as a result I will not re-newing my subscription if this matter isn't resolved.

[Den M.2]

Im currently syncing my db account to my mac. 

Got 100Mbps connection but at real time my download speed from Dropbox servers is just 3,000 KB/s. My dropbox files are 60GB.

This is slow and not using my internet subscription 100%.

I just downloaded a 20GB game from Steam and I got full 10MB/s download.

Dropbox you're doing something wrong. You need to get this fixed or I'll find a new cloud service.

[Rich]

Remember to do the conversions before comparing your speed numbers. While most ISPs and speed test sites display their results in bits (kilo or mega), the speeds reported by Dropbox are in bytes. Be sure to do the conversion before comparing. Your 3000 KB/sec speed is approximately 24Mb/sec, which is plenty fast. Not to mention that under real world conditions you'll never get 100Mb/sec. The speed of your connection is only guaranteed to your ISP. Beyond their network they can't guarantee those speeds as there are too many other factors to take into consideration; distance between you and the server you're communicating with, that server's uplink speed (you can't download at 100Mb if they can't upload at 100Mb), congestion on third-party networks that your traffic is traveling on, etc.

And finally, 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 KB/s speed that's displayed in the Dropbox sync status. i.e. It's not just the network speed you're seeing.

[Jocelyn R.1]

Rich,

he is downloading files from Dropbox to his PC... no hashing here.

And in 2016, 24Mbps is slow by every standards.  I easily download at 50+MB/s (close to 500Mbps) from Google drive every single time.

Dropbox is slow, it is what it is.  No reason to blame "The Internet" in general.

Cheers

[ChB]

"[Dropbox] has successfully moved about 90 percent of those files onto this new online empire."

The Epic Story of Dropbox’s Exodus From the Amazon Cloud Empire

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/epic-story-dropboxs-exodus-amazon-cloud-empire/

[Dave S.20]

Figured I'd chime in here, not sure if this helps anyone. I did quite a bit of trial and error to finally get my setup working.

Biggest thing: I switched my ISP.

I know: this sucks. But, with standard Comcast I was only getting about 10mb/s upload speeds and for whatever reason Dropbox only seems to utilize about 1-10% of my bandwidth — even when bandwidth settings are at "don't limit". Switching to fiber I was able to get about 60mb/s upload speeds and averaged 5mb/s upload over wifi and would get up to 10 directly plugged in.

Second thing: Limit bandwidth

I can't verify this 100% but it seemed — as others have mentioned — limiting the download rate to like 50kb/s would let the upload speeds thrive. However, I felt like instead of "limit automatically" or "don't limit" I'd actually get better upload speeds when setting an upload limit of around 30,000. Again, can't verify but seemed on average a little better.

Third thing: Energy Saver settings in System Preferences (mac)

Again, there's probably one thing you can do to keep Dropbox syncing while your computer is asleep — or maybe it does automatically? But just to be safe I plugged in my computer and set the Power Adapter settings both to "Never" and unchecked "Power Nap" and "Put hard disks to sleep when possible".

All of this is still frustrating and will hopefully be resolved. I am not smart enough to point the blame in any one direction. Still a big fan of Dropbox.

All said and done over 2 nights of letting my computer stay plugged in and active I was able to get 1TB of files uploaded — not too shabby.