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Very Slow Upload Speeds even after of the trouble shooting on the forum.

brtmix

Hi,

I've been working directly in my dropbox folder for a while now.

Everything was fine until a couple months ago and not uploads are crawling.

With speedtest.net my speed is always just about 10Mbps.

Dropbox is never going above 1.4kbps even with my bandwith set to No Limit.

I need to deliver 12-20GB files with fast turnarounds every day and my delivery time has become a big problem.

I need to fix this right away or leave dropbox all together if it's not quickly resolved.

Thanks

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invalidation

I'm having a similar issue: uploads specifically to Dropbox is between 45-60 KB/sec. I'm on a 2.5Gbps up/down fiber connect. I've followed the standard troubleshooting steps, to no avail.

Megan

Hi @brtmix & @invalidation, I'd be more than happy to help!

The first thing we need to clarify in regards to the speed of your app when you use it to upload content, is if you're using the stable version instead of the beta one.

I would like for you to locate your Dropbox icon on the menu or task bar, next to your WiFi and hover your mouse. That should give you a number. Can you pass it on to me?

Also, do you know approximately how many files you have in your Dropbox account? Would you be close to our soft limit of 300K files?

Let me know more, and we'll take it from there!

brtmix

Hi. The version of the app I have is 168.4.4802.

It might be possible that I've reached 300k with all of the tiny files that Pro Tools makes.

Is there a way to find out for sure how many files I have uploaded?

I'll pull down everything that can be archived and see if that does anything.

Thanks.

invalidation

I'm on v 168.4.4802, just at 10,299 files.

Megan

Hi @brtmix & @invalidation, so you're on the stable version of the app, which is good.

As for the files, you can right click on your Dropbox folder, and check there for an approximate number of files.

Is there a possibility that a proxy, VPN, firewall, security software, or even ISP/router issues that could be restricting traffic to the following Dropbox domains?

Can you check if this is related to your internet connection or device by trying another device on the same WiFi network, or by using your device on a different network entirely?

invalidation

I've already checked over my networking equipment and router; no limiting is in place. I have also tried on multiple computers, on multiple networks.

It seems this is a fairly common issue given the number of people with similar issues throughout the forums.

brtmix

I'm at about 130,000 files.

How do I check any proxies?

The rest should not be an issue.

VPN - No

Firewall - No

security software - No

ISP/Router - working great

I tried uploading to the DB app through finder on two other macs over the same wifi and both very uploading even slower (170 kbps).

Testing on another network won't be possible today unfortunately.

Thanks!

invalidation

@Megan On a wild hunch, I just decided to try to tunnel my full traffic through a VPN service, and the transfer has improved to 16MB/s.

It appears my ISP (AT&T Fiber) is throttling traffic from you services or application...

brtmix

@Megan I just tried a VPN and my speed in the DB App did not improve at all.

My ISP is spectrum in case that's useful.

invalidation

I'm not even sure if it is the ISP in my case; I'm still seeing throttling when not connected to VPN through a different ISP. It seems to be some issue with the dropbox application. Using other methods to upload files works perfectly fine. The dropbox application just seems to throttle whenever I'm not connected through a VPN (?????)

Megan

Hi guys, thanks for checking!

I apologize for my lengthy response, I just want to make sure I've covered everything.

The Dropbox servers do not set caps on the upload or download speeds from the Desktop client, but file sync is a complicated process that includes more than just the transfer of the data.

Please keep in mind each file is divided and compressed into hashed components, transferred via secure data transfer, and then encrypted and stored on our servers. During an upload, the transfer speeds are also dependent upon how quickly your computer can process and compress the components of the files to make them available for upload.

The Dropbox client will also batch upload smaller files into batches of 800 files. If you have 800 * 1 kB files the effective batch that's sent to Dropbox will be 800 kB in size.

Please keep in mind that the actual sync speed you see may not match these speeds directly as we are including the hash, compression, and encryption process in our aggregate kB/s speed.

Also, all of the Dropbox servers are located in the US. Your connection speed to Dropbox depends on the routing you get between your ISP and our servers, and may be slower than your ISP's rated speeds.

Sometimes resetting or retrying your connection gets you a different route and better speeds, but that is outside of our control. Some ISPs also throttle sustained connections so if you see an initial high connection speed followed by lower speeds, that could be the reason.

invalidation

@Megan,

The best I can theorize here is a bad route somewhere.

I (and an associate) are having the same issues from two ISP; which eliminates the ISP issue.

The issue does not occur when not using the desktop app.

I’m running a 20 CPU core unit with 64GB of ram, so I doubt it’s an issue of local resources.

It seems to only be an issue when both using the desktop app and not tunneling; telling me the desktop app is possibly using services that other uploading methods don’t use, and those services are either faulty or have a bad route.

I have my work-around for now, but its neither useful nor acceptable in the long-term to require a second service to make a function work properly.

brtmix

@MeganI have a fully loaded m1 mac. So it's not that. And based on all of the other forum articles I've read it sounds like it's on Drobox's end.

This was never a problem. I've been uploading and delivering massive files with you guys for years with quick upload times.

What can we do to resolve this?

@invalidation It sounds like you're a bit more network savvy than me. Which VPN are you using as the workaround? I tried Proton and it didn't work at all.

Thanks!

invalidation

@brtmix I used Nord; had to kill the desktop app and reload it for it to tunnel properly.

brtmix

@invalidation Thanks! Just tried Nord and it's not making any difference for me. ugh...

@Megan What's next?

Jay

Hi @brtmix, if you're still experiencing issues, feel free to contact the support team for them to investigate further on their end.

SFLVideo

I've been having the exact same issues, located in Miami on ATT Fiber connection, I can reach 1GBPS up and down with no issues on speedtests, Dropbox downloads are good but uploading via the client or website to Dropbox servers over the last 2-3 months have been terrible. I am now thinking of switching providers, a VPN solves the issues so this is a routing issue.

I just did a simple test, 300-400kbps upload with no VPN soon as I enabled PIA VPN I get 1GBPS Upload. Dropbox has been having some routing issues for awhile now.