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?

[Bennett H.]

Matthias,

I think there are two possible explanations which are consistent with all the evidence:

1)

The first possibility is that it is an intermittent problem with Dropbox's servers, but that most existing users don't notice because they're using Dropbox the same way I am, which is:

- a huge initial upload (70 GB in my case), where if the upload speed is slow, it's a major problem
- thereafter, only incremental uploads when a file is added or changed, so slow speeds are less of an issue and the user might not even notice

So during the most recent flurry of messages on this thread when people were complaining about slow speeds (late December to early January), maybe a lot of their long-time users were also getting slow speeds but just didn't happen to notice because they were only using it for incremental backups at that point, and long ago they had done their initial huge upload during a period when it Dropbox's servers were working.

Were you using Dropbox regularly in late-December-early-January, and do you specifically remember uploading large files on multiple occasions, and observing a fast upload speed as reported by the Dropbox client?

If you did, then you're correct, this indicates it's not a problem with Dropbox's servers, which brings up the second possibility:

2)

And that is that out of all the Dropbox client installs, a certain proportion of the time the client just simply doesn't work properly, even when the user is doing everything right.  Bob P just mentioned that he discovered it was because it was fighting with Windows Search.  Or it could be for some other reason.  But it's still Dropbox's responsibility because it's their client that is not working correctly.

In either case, looking at the messages in this thread from Jeff N. and Encore P. and Bill A. on the first page, and from Ricardo T. and Bob B. on this page if you scroll up a bit, it seems pretty clear that they're all technically informed people who are probably not missing something obvious (in particular, we all un-checked the speed-throttling box and we all ran an upload speed test).  If Dropbox isn't working for people who are that well informed, then it's probably an issue with Dropbox, whether it's the server or the client.

[Phill S.]

Was an inch away from upgrading to business from pro.

Until I tried this myself.

Only 35 days to upload 350gb here.

Not so bad ... if you leave for a nice holiday in Bali and come back it should all be done !

[Matthias W.4]

@Bennett, Phil

Again the math here does not add up at all. At 150 megabit upload speed 350gb should (and DO) take around 5-6 hours. I constantly reach 100-130 megabit upload speeds with dropbox, so make that a conservative 10 hours for 350gb of data to upload. 

Anything that takes longer (with the latest Dropbox desktop app version) should be investigate on the user's side. There are tons of supporting and confirming comments on this site as well as all over the internet stating that the newest dropbox desktop app reaches stated upload speeds. 

If someone is throttled on their ISP side they should, for heaven's sake, stop bitxxing about Dropbox. 

Show me any other retail cloud service (stress retail here, clearly excluding the likes of Amazon AWS...) that reaches or exceeds Dropbox's upload speed and I am happy to bow before you and publicly apologize. It does not exist. Simple as that. 

[Matthias W.4]

@Bennett, so, can you upload a file NOW and report the upload speed you are experiencing? What is the point to complain about speeds months ago. Do you experience any issues now, any unsatisfactory experience now? 

[Phill S.]

Unfortunately my upload speed is only 0.48Mbps

Not bytes bit/sec.

My current upload (unlimited in preferences) is currently 33KB/S

You are right .. the maths does not add up indeed.

All I know is that I now have 36 days left for my upload.

22,568 files totaling now 264GB

I am just syncing the folder .. not uploading directly to dropbox.

Should I be ?

I am using v3.12.6 ... Is that too old ? 

[Matthias W.4]

@Phill, I use the exact same version (I think its the newest non-beta stable version). I can only repeat what I said many times, the speed can obviously not be impacted on Dropbox's side when numerous users all over the world can upload at 100-150 megabits/second. I am in Hong Kong, admittedly I do not know whether Dropbox rents cloud storage in the Asian region and routes my traffic there or whether it goes to a US data center). You should really talk to your ISP, even if they deny they may still throttle upload speeds. Read user forums and check what others say about your specific ISP. 

[Phill S.]

Yes I am in Australia with Optus .. so it could be them. I guess.

They are a rubbish ISP ... but we have little choice here in Australia any more.

[Matthias W.4]

@Phill, well not sure what you expect then. A brief glance at your ISP seems to be cause for shudder:

http://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/home-broadband/network/internet-speed 

(mostly 1mpbs upload speeds, not sure how you expect to be faster than that then)

Then a lot of negative reports:

https://community.optus.com.au/t5/Broadband-Telephony/Why-is-my-internet-speed-throttled-between-7-3...

https://community.optus.com.au/t5/Broadband-Telephony/Proof-of-the-notorious-Optus-peak-period-throt...

https://community.optus.com.au/t5/Broadband-Telephony/How-can-I-increase-my-upload-speed/td-p/54284

[Matthias W.4]

All I am saying is let's keep it honest here, most often the problem simply did/does not lie with Dropbox. I get nothing for saying that nor am I in any way affiliated. Heck, I am not even a proponent of Python (the language of choice for them on the backend I heard) but my experience has been overall excellent with Dropbox, their sync feature is rock solid (no other app came even remotely close) and the speeds are the fastest in retail space. Let's keep this discussion honest, most often the issue lies with the user's ISP. 

[Bennett H.]

@Matthias I don't have an axe to grind against Dropbox, but I'm looking for an explanation that is consistent with all the evidence, and multiple people have posted on this thread that:
- they were getting unacceptably slow upload speeds to Dropbox
- they had already disabled throttling in the Dropbox client
- they did a speed test confirming that their ISP upload speed was much faster than they were getting from Dropbox
- the technical details that they posted, as well as their credentials in some cases, suggested that they knew what they were doing (and I would optimistically like to think of myself as included in this group)

I do not think it's consistent with this evidence to assume that all the problem reports are due to user error or slow ISP speeds.

On the other hand, many users have reported fast upload speeds at least some of the time.  (I myself just started uploading a 100 MB test file and got reported upload speeds of about 1 MB per second -- yes capital-B bytes.)  I think this rules out some other explanations -- for example, it rules out the idea that the physical pipe to Dropbox is just too slow to handle all of their customer traffic (because in that case it would be slow all of the time, not just some of the time).

So I think the main possibilities at this point are:

1) Dropbox frequently experiences periods of slow connection speeds -- sometimes lasting several days, which is how long I spent trying in vain to do a bulk upload the first time -- but it works well the rest of the time.  Many users just don't notice the slow connection speed periods, if they did one initial huge upload during a time when Dropbox happened to be working, and then use it for small incremental backups after that.

2) Some proportion of the time, there is a problem with the Dropbox client install, or there is some attribute of a particular user's setup, which is not an error by the user but which causes Dropbox not to work properly.  This is not a server-side problem but it should still be Dropbox's responsibility to fix it.
In particular, perhaps Dropbox uploads much slower when uploading a large number of small files, than when uploading one large file.  I had originally planned on doing more experimenting to test for something like that, but I didn't have any more time to keep diagnosing bugs in Dropbox.