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Why is my download speed slow?
Hi, I don't understand why I'm having such a big problem downloading a movie from my Dropbox file onto my MacbookPro laptop. The file is only 1.2GB, I'm connected to my router with an ethernet cable, with a fibre-optic connection of 50/50Mbps uncapped and unthrottled. I've tried many times already, but the download is either ridiculously slow or stops altogether. I'm on Dropbox Pro, I have plenty space on my laptop hard drive, and I'm not doing anything else on the laptop at the same time. Am i doing this incorrectly or what? Help help please!
Don't forget your data is transmitted encrypted and must be decrypted. That happens on the drive, along with checks to make sure the enitre file reaches you. It will take some time.
Dropbox will never use the complete full download bandwidth. It also is affected by you using other things, like mail, web etc during those times Dropbox may slow the process to allow you to continue working. It could be affected by things like you allowing the computer to sleep.
Have you checked your bandwidth settings ? https://help.dropbox.com/syncing-uploads/faster-sync
Many, many, factors can contribute to each users individual experience.
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- And just for completeness, remember that the speed you see reported by Dropbox is not simply the transfer speed of your data. Tom and Jay have already mentioned the encryption, but 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 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 never be compared to the advertised speeds from your ISP.
I believe we are a vocal minority and probable beneath the notice of the DropBox support crew.
The slow speed severely hampers the usefulness of DropBox as a cloud solution for backup.
- Rich
Super User II
I believe we are a vocal minority and probable beneath the notice of the DropBox support crew.
Not at all, but you actually need to contact Dropbox Support before they can respond to you.
We are based in the South of Germany, have DROPBOX BUSINESS, paying quite a lot and extactly the same problem. Since round about 14 days the download is incredibly slow. It doesn't matter waht system (PC, MAC), what browser or what machine (IP) is used. And the support either provides standard replies, that do not meet the problem or doesn' react at all. This is unprofessional and bad practice to not deal with a problem.
I've decided not to bother with DropBox any more (way too slow), so I don't want to receive an e-mail every time somebody is dissatisfied with it. I followed the link in the e-mail that says ....
If you want to stop these notifications click here.
....and it brought me here. I didn't see a link to stop the e-mails, so I signed in, but I still don't see the means to stop them. I visited My Activities and My Profile, but there's nothing there either.
Can somebody please tell me how to stop the e-mails, or preferably, how to delete my account?
Downloadspeed 4,6 kbit/s!!! You must be kidding!
They are really ambitous. Tomorrow they will be better (1,0) and after tomorrow they will almost reach the top: 0,01. Then we all will congratulate.
After the ridiculous speeds I've been getting on my 50/10 connection (in the ballpark of 40kbyte/s when synching files to my computer) I can only advise everyone to drop Dropbox and move to OneDrive or even a Hetzner Storagebox.
I wrote to the support - all I get in return was an generic answer and a link to their FAQs! I´m through with this sh*t! I deleted my files and moved on. Good luck to you all!
I started having this problem about two years ago, and it is definitely a dropbox issue. Google Drive, when downloading exactly at the same time, on my Fios internet using Chrome, downloaded my multi gig files at lightning speed. Dropbox is, at this moment, downloading files at 62 kbps. I am only still on dropbox because I haven't weened all of my clients off of it. I am a Pro user as well. It is pretty much theivery. I respect Google much more.
I have new computer and am trying to download my Dropbox onto it. I get at least 50 Mbps download.
1 GB = 1000 MB = 8000 Mb
Therefore 1 GB should take 2.7 minutes; lets say 3 minutes.
200 GB should take 600 minutes, or 10 hours.
TWO DAYS LATER, I have downloaded 100 GB... it will take at least FOUR DAYS to download 200 GB and God forbid I ever fill up to 1TB, I can expect almost A MONTH to download from Dropbox to a BRAND NEW COMPUTER with an i5 8th Gen Intel processor????
I don't even know what to think about this. Dropbox had been working for me despite its horrible iOS interface.
Do people have better experiences with One Drive?
This & the fact that there is no real time support and no one on weekends - why would anyone stay with Dropbox?
Maybe someone FROM DROPBOX can answer instead of leaving it their hapless CUSTOMERS to take care of each other.
Tom H.Super User
Don't forget your data is transmitted encrypted and must be decrypted. That happens on the drive, along with checks to make sure the enitre file reaches you. It will take some time.
Dropbox will never use the complete full download bandwidth. It also is affected by you using other things, like mail, web etc during those times Dropbox may slow the process to allow you to continue working. It could be affected by things like you allowing the computer to sleep.
Have you checked your bandwidth settings ? https://help.dropbox.com/syncing-uploads/faster-sync
Many, many, factors can contribute to each users individual experience.
----
🐾
If this has helped you, please Kudo this post.
🐾
If it has solved your issue please ✓ Accept as Solution.
- Jay
Dropbox Staff
