Can you force Dropbox to use more bandwidth?

Question

Curious if there's a way anyone has found to get Dropbox to use more of your available bandwidth when syncing files. I have gig speed internet, but consistently the fastest Dropbox syncing speeds I can get are max 10-20 mb/s. I've tested my internet speeds with a number of other methods, and found my overall speeds to consistently be 500-1,000 mb/s at the same time that Dropbox will tell me it's syncing at around 10-20 mb/s. Sometimes Dropbox is even at 1 mb/s or less.

I don't have any bandwidth limit set in the Dropbox preferences. It's set to "Don't limit" for both downloads and uploads.

I work with Dropbox as a remote server and am constantly syncing files all day... so I'm just trying to get files to sync faster, and I'd love for Dropbox to be able to use more of my available bandwidth. Even if it could use a little bit more of my available bandwidth, that would be a huge time saver. It would help me not have to just wait for hours at a time sometimes when Dropbox won't let me do anything else while files sync.

Anyone come across this, or have any ideas?

Rich · Accepted Answer

@rusdom wrote:I have gig speed internet, but consistently the fastest Dropbox syncing speeds I can get are max 10-20 mb/s. I've tested my internet speeds with a number of other methods, and found my overall speeds to consistently be 500-1,000 mb/s

While most ISPs and speed test sites display their results in bits, the speeds reported by Dropbox are in Bytes. Be sure to do the conversion before comparing. Your 20MB/s transfer speed as reported by Dropbox is approximately 160Mb/s.

Also, 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, the speed reported by Dropbox is not just a transfer speed, but the speed at which the entire process is being completed. It can't be directly compared to a download speed from other sites/services.

And finally, regarding your speed test, unless you specify otherwise, your speed test will be run to a local server (speed test sites always select a local server by default). For a more accurate result pick one close to the Dropbox servers which are in San Francisco. Also remember that some ISPs have been known to provide priority speeds when performing speed tests.