Uploading to Google Drive through N4L - throughput seems slow

[Dael Sutton]

Good afternoon, Techies.

I've just noticed that it appears currently faster to upload a large file to our Google Drive through my phone's 4G hotspot than through our 2.5gbps internet connection.

I've also had anecdotal reports from staff that they now take their captured videos home to upload to Google Shard Drives as it's faster at home than here at school.

Given that we just upgraded everything internally to 10gE and can finally take full advantage of the N4L 2.5gE provided connection, this seems strange.

We can, however, download at considerable throughput from other sites outside of Google, and can upload to them pdq as well.  Running multiple fast.com & speedtest.net connections at the same time from different locations within the school shows that we can push the connection quite hard now;

(sorry for the quality of the photo, had to use camera as forgot that the graph resets by default if you tab away from it to run said tests)

Everything's working, but just upload to Google seems to be an issue.

I think this is just an N4L thing, as I did a test via a VM we have access to at another site that's behind a 2Degrees connection, and was able to get at least three times the throughput of the upload test file I was using (750mb) from there vs here.

Has anyone else noticed this?  Or is it just us? Before we completed the internal upgrade to 10gE we asked N4L to throttle Youtube for us, and have requested that throttle be removed, but it hasn't yet, and perhaps it's that throttle applying to everything Google instead of just Youtube.

Any thoughts from you would be appreciated.

Regards,

D.

Dael Sutton
Assistant Network Manager

03 358 8383

Greers Road, Burnside
PO Box 29677 Christchurch 8440
New Zealand

www.burnside.school.nz

_______________________

"Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock phasers on the Heffalump. Piglet, meet me in transporter room three. Christopher Robin, you have the bridge."

_______________________

Manere fortis, serva mandata cursum

_______________________

[Craig Knights]

Yeah this was a thing for us back in 2023 too. Just Google and just through N4L. Your scenario is very familiar.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Techies for schools" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to techies-for-sch...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/techies-for-schools/CAABxgYcekN7p2VJLJ3DFOY%3DV%3DY27MLm_2p%3DcL%2BO7Z1iG-8xtLA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Dael Sutton]

Hi Craig. Can you remember what you did to resolve this issue?  We've logged a ticket with N4L to investigate, but anything else to try could come in handy. Kent suggested checking MTU's, which was good to rule out at least.

Regards,

D.

[Craig Knights]

We didn't. At the time it seemed to be the consensus it was Google rate limiting.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/techies-for-schools/31d50afd-7ee7-4de2-a592-04981001d372n%40googlegroups.com.

[Dael Sutton]

To be honest, that would be fair if it was. Here's hoping @smsteve may be able to confirm.

Regards.

D.

[Steve Smith - Google for Education NZ]

Hi all.

If the speed is faster via phone upload off the school network that would suggest the network is the issue.

can you double check with n4l

Conversely, do the file upload and if it is still slow, log a support request via your admin console so our support team can check the logs and see what has happened 

[Dion McGovern-Allen]

From memory when I was on the N4L service desk this issue has been around.

I had thought it might be a limitation of the fortigate and scanning a flow of traffic through for nasties.

So multiple concurrent uploads should net a faster upload while individual ones are limited.

I recall one of the other members that I believe I've seen on this forum raised the issue back then.

I recall the speed being somewhere around 10Mb/s or there abouts.

In fact, I asked them to remove a rule that I had set on the Fortigate for testing where I work now!

"15 OUT_TEST – this was a policy I might have setup when I was subcontracted to N4L for a year of helpdesk support.
I used FAHS as I had access to test allowing google services and upload speeds.
Given that it doesn’t follow the normal OUT_A_LAN_INTERNET_NAME-OF-RULE, I’d bet on it 😃"

It was setup to skip scanning on outbound traffic to Google Services.
Trying to my personal Google Account (We are Microsoft only here) I see its still around 6.25MB/s - 12.5MB/s
Microsoft seems to be the same with slight fluctuations higher at times.