Speed Up Dropbox Download
Amal Shelenberger
When you add or change files on dropbox.com or anywhere else you access your files in Dropbox, those changes are reflected in the Dropbox desktop app. Your download rate affects how fast this happens.
That won't do you any good. There are so many things that affect speed that you could have two people with an identical setup and still have wildly different speeds. Your computer, your local network, your ISP, the route your traffic takes to get to Dropbox, the Dropbox network and servers, congestion along any part of the route to Dropbox, throttling by your ISP (very common), failures along the route that cause your traffic to take another path, etc.
What I would say though is that it will speed up once the initial folder creation is completed and it gets on to larger files. Dropbox sync's smallest -> largest and as smallest has the most overheads these are slowest to download.
That doesn't help me much - I can't believe downloads can be this slow. I've got a fast computer and just about the fastest internet that you can get and I'm still only getting 20MB/s. What are the fastest speeds other people are getting?
The speed from your ISP is likely listed in Kb/s or Mb/s; megabits. The speeds reported by Dropbox are in KB/s or MB/s; bytes. You need to do the conversion before you can simply compare them.
Also, the speed you see from Dropbox isn't simply the transfer speed of the data. 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 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. The actual transfer speed is higher, but when you factor in the entire process, it appears lower.
I found that if I turn my VPN on, then my transfer rates get a bit better. They jump from 20MB/s to 70MB/s so I my ISP Bell Canada seems to be throttling dropbox traffic. Which is odd because they don't throttle Google drive.
That's the equivalent of a 108Mbps connection, which is fast. Again, remember, that's NOT just the transfer speed to/from Dropbox. That's the speed in which your files are processed, start to finish, with all the hashing, compressing, encrypting, etc., that takes place during the process.
And, again, 13.5MBps is not the same as 13.5Mbps. It IS the same as 108Mbps. A 13.5MBps speed to Dropbox is fast. Likely one of the fastest reported speeds I've seen to Dropbox.
I tested my internet speed and I should have 70-80 Mbps download / 10-20 Mpbs upload. On Dropbox I've only been getting a dismal 1-3 kbps upload speed! I had one 80-megabyte file that was taking days to "sync" to Dropbox. I moved it to my Google Drive and it only took about minute to upload there. So it's really Dropbox that's the problem. I'm very annoyed because I've been relying on Dropbox as my primary syncing service and just renewed my subscription last April. If I can't use Dropbox properly due to the unbearably slow upload speed I'll have to move back to Google Drive.
Thank you for your response, @Lusil! I would like to update you that I tried using a VPN, and my Dropbox upload speed is back to normal. I suspect that my ISP might be throttling Dropbox traffic because my friend using the same ISP was also experiencing extremely slow service with Dropbox and also got their Dropbox upload speed back to normal when they turned on their VPN. So this is something you might want to suggest to other users experiencing similar.
@jojosimi @Charlene2 I was able to get back my normal Dropbox upload speed by using a VPN. It seems to be an ISP throttling issue for me. If you want to try using a VPN and need help choosing one, I found this comparison chart very honest and helpful:
Hi Lusil, thanks! Actually, I've had Google Drive off for a while now because I was relying primarily on Dropbox. I only turned on Google Drive precisely because I noticed that Dropbox was taking forever to upload even tiny text files, and I really needed to sync some files with my phone, so I turned on Google Drive to try comparing upload speed.
I am using TunnelBear as my VPN and I see no difference. I have 7GB across 5 files I need to upload with speeds as slow as 10kbps. I have a 120mbit download and 10mbit upload connection. At this point I'm debating cancelling my account. I'm not paying for this result.
I just wanted to post here to see if there were fellow community members who had also had the opportunity to use the new audio playback speed features, and give them an opportunity to add support for returning this function if they so wished. I'm very happy that many people also found it useful.
just wanted to make sure you and others reading knew it could be done on the site. For me I walk and listen to long recorded audios and sometimes I just paste the link into safari to bypass the app to get the speed controls.
I am stuck with upload speeds of less than 1 KB/s with Dropbox (actually around 0.2KB/s). I'm on a 10 Mbps upload connection (10 Mbps = 1,250 KB/s) with all other uploads at or around 10 Mbps. Any idea why my Dropbox app could be uploading at less than 1/1000x my available bandwidth and any idea on how I can resolve this? At this rate, my files would take weeks to upload, and that is simply not practical.
Hey I'm having a similar problem, the problem is still present after rebooting my windows 10 machine.
I'm using Dropbox v 87.4.138 - I've tried to exit the dropbox program and start it again, the pop up tool tip shows speed around 0.2-0.8kb/s right after start-up, then it shows nothing, i guess that means 0.0kb/s upload (I can see nothing is happening in my Network task manager, so dropbox is not sending or receiving any data).
Uploading to Dropbox is very slow. It starts with 40MB/s and then subsequently decreases until it is in low single digits. Sometimes it stays in the 10- 20MB Range, but typically it falls below. I tried the things described here : Dropbox, but it did not help. Also i noticed that everytime 128MB are uploaded nothing happens for about 5 Seconds.
I have a Hetzner Server with Gigabit Uplink, and I had no Problems uploading to google with about 100MB/s constant speed.
Can someone help?
Edit: Even with this setting is the speed continously decreasing... Something very strange happens here.. It starts with almost full speed now (about 100MB/s) and then it is fluctuating and decreasing more and more... after short time it is down to 80 MB/s ..
I've been strugling this speed problem with rclone/Dropbox in the last 4-6 months using CloudSync Task in TrueNAS-13.0-U1.1 with the configuration:
root@freenas: # rclone --version
rclone v1.59.1
First I was thinking it could be the Truenas version, so I updated to the latest stable version (TrueNAS-13.0-U1.1) and even tried to update the rclone binary but it didn't worked.
I'm using CloudSync (task in Truenas) with a gigabit connection and in the beginning I was uploading with all the bandwidth speed available to the Truenas server at the moment. As a I usually upload when we have no internet activity, so my Truenas was capable to use all the bandwidth available to the server at that moment.
Checking some screenshots when deploying Cloydsync in Truenas even during the "work hour" I was able to peak such as 23.576 MBytes/s and an average 8.000 Mbytes/s with 4 or more active TASKS uploads. This peak speed was from a single file with 29.602 GBytes:
I tried and research a lot in the TrueNas forum and couldn't find the source of the problem. There's most people with the same problem also have a route problem with their ISP and Dropbox.
I don't think it's an ISP problem because my server and other computers are in the same network and share the same route. If I get a large file and upload it using a task in TrueNas it will peak a slow speed but if I use a browser in a windows machine even using WiFi it will upload maxed to the limit of the connection.
ps: I'm posting screenshot's because it's easily to me to display the info. TrueNas saves the credentials and config for the task in their db so only when the task is running it creates a temp file so rclone could read from it. Even running directly in the cli I could achieve full speed.
Been using Google Drive for years (with Animosity022 settings) and it has been perfect. Just been sent the email about my Gdrive account exceeded and thought that I would start on Dropbox. I am getting very slow upload speeds (approx 150-250 kBytes/s). I have a hetzner server with gigabit down/up. Google gets excellent speeds.
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