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Forum Discussion
Dropbox upload sync is very slow
Hi, I've been using Dropbox business for years now with my current company and my previous two jobs. I'm trying to archive all my old footage and while I have 1000mbps up and down, my upload on dropbox is about 12mbps. I'm trying to upload dozens of terabytes and this is going to delay things significantly. Help!
I run a small video production studio and we use a Dropbox advanced plan to sync our files to the cloud. For the past couple of years we have had no issues syncing hundreds of gigabytes a day at speeds typically averaging 300-400mbit/s.
However, over the past few weeks, those speeds have dropped drastically and now we're lucky to see 10-20mbit/s, so our syncs are often taking days to complete.
This is happening on different devices, different networks and even on different home/office internet connections. Our main network is 10 gigabit and we have a high speed 1 gigabit fiber connection.
Given that this is occurring across so many devices on different connections, I can only assume the issue is at Dropbox's end. However I'm not having any luck with their support.
So I figured I'd try here. Has anyone had a similar issue and been able to resolve it?
TIA.
I run a photography business and I have encountered the same thing the past few weeks. I used to average > 8MB/s when uploading my RAW photos to my editor. For the past few weeks I've been lucky to get over 1MB/s. I've run speed tests to check my ISP upload speed and I can easily get 12MB/s. Not sure what has happened over the past couple weeks but this needs to be fixed.
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey snapdragon, I've just moved your post to this relevant thread.
Would you mind taking a look at the info above, to see if you find anything useful to your case?
Hey, did you end up getting this solved? I've been using drobox for months now with upload speeds being super fast, last 72 hours it's been almost impossible to use even though my internet is still fast as always. Dropbox support has been incredibly slow and pointing me at all the usual suspects that are not heling (antivirus/firewall issues, ISP throttling, Cache problems, device problems). But multiple members of my team are experiencing the same issue.
No, I got the same line about throttling and server location. Interesting as I get line speed to every other service, dropboxes backend just sucks. I’m moving to Onedrive.
What's happening with Dropbox uploads latesly.... I'm on a fiber 40Mbps upload link and all I can get from Dropbox is 600Kbps for uploads. It was fine a week ago but since last Thursday speeds have dropped to unusable levels. This is only happening with Dropbox, we have tested file uploads with our Goggle Drive and it is using the full 40Mbps upload bandwith.
Come on Dropbox sys admins, confess! You're clearly throttling server uploads because of some back-end technical problem aren't you? ☹️Thanks Hannah I already saw Rich's response to this problem when I was searching for clues on the forum. I have already established it is not my ISP throttling speeds, and I've also checked my Dropbox system preferences and made sure the upload was set to unlimited and not auto or throttled. I have verified this on two different computers (a laptop and this desktop) and they are both experiencing the slow uploads.
I've since bought a Google Drive subscription and have not experiencing any throttling issues with my uploads; it is uploading at my full 40Mbps bandwidth, so the issue is with Dropbox.
- Rich
Super User II
VisDom wrote:
... all I can get from Dropbox is 600Kbps for uploads.
Is that the speed being reported by Dropbox? If so, remember that Dropbox doesn't reports speeds in Kbps or Mbps. They report speeds in KBps or MBps. Your 600 Kbps speed is actually equivalent to 4.8 Mbps, and that it's not just an upload speed. That's the speed for the entire process of hashing, encrypting, uploading and storing the files on the servers. It can't be compared to a straight upload speed.
I know I'm repeating what was posted in my other response, but few people ever consider this when they talk about the speeds they think they're getting.
- Rich
uno_dos_andres wrote:
... while I have 1000mbps up and down, my upload on dropbox is about 12mbps.
Make sure you have your bandwidth settings in Preferences set to Don't Limit. Aside from that, there's not much you can do to improve your transfer speed.
When comparing speeds, remember that while most ISPs advertise their speeds in bits (kilo or mega), the speeds reported by Dropbox are in Bytes. Be sure to do the conversion before comparing. If Dropbox is showing you a speed of 12MBps, that's equivalent to 96Mbps.
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 MB/s speed that's displayed in the Dropbox sync status. In other words, it's not just a transfer speed and can't be directly compared to the upload and download speeds provided by your ISP.
I have good wifi. I'm uploading digital negative photo files from Lightroom about 50mb in size, to Dropbox. It is really, really slow. Like 1 file every half hour!! Please help
Hi Hanna,
Thanks for your reply. Yes, I'm using the desktop app. I've unlimited the
upload speed as you suggested, and have restarted the computer.
It is still deathly slow. I have 136 dng files waiting to sync, its almost doing nothing.
Been having the same issue that started a couple of weeks ago.
I am getting below 1 Mbps when uploading to dropbox ( ~0.143 Mbps reported ).
This is the case for both desktop and web-based interfaces.
ISP connection is stable and speed tests return nominal rates when troubleshooting.
File transfer speeds are normal (as-expected) to any other service or destination, such as google Drive.
It is a company dropbox account but I am the only one experiencing the slowdown.
No significant help has been found outside recommendations to reboot network devices or change the bandwidth prefs in the desktop app.
This slow transfer speed renders the dropbox service useless for its intended need.
- Jay
Hi Verenhaul, since you're getting this on the desktop app and the site, then my earlier post would apply, since something is restricting the bandwidth to Dropbox servers.
Do other devices on the same network experience this issue? Is this a laptop which can be moved to another network entirely and tested there? This would help determine if it's the device or network that is throttling the bandwidth.
