How Long To Upload 50gb

Stop us if you've heard this i before. Y'all want to upload your stuff to Dropbox, but it's taking hours, days, or if you're trying to archive a lot of data, even weeks. Why does it take so long?

The respond is quite simple, it's your connexion. You were probably thrilled at first with your broadband connectedness. You could download files and movies in a few minutes, larger files take longer but it's no large deal because you tin can still watch streaming movies, mind to music, view sporting events, and it all seems enough fast enough.

Simply non so much with uploading stuff. If you try to share video files, or back upward virtual machines, annal music, movies, or even photos to the deject, yous find out quickly that information technology can be a long, boring wait.

Upload Speeds: The Number ISPs Don't Brag About

Upload speed is very important. Information technology has a noticeable affect on overall speed, and if you're trying to upload a bunch of stuff to your deject folders, it can really bog your connection down.

You're probably well enlightened of your download speed because your ISP boldly advertises it, usually leaving your upload speed to the finer impress.

Here are some of Time Warner's Internet packages. Note how the download speeds are in large blazon and bolded, while the upload speeds are discretely mentioned below it.

Or, they might not make upload speeds immediately credible at all.

Here'south a look at a couple of Comcast'due south offerings. If you click "Learn More", they'll tell you what your upload speeds could be with each tier, merely the big number here are download speeds.

By contrast, fiber ISPs don't have this problem. Verizon FIOS for case, advertises their upload speeds aslope download speeds.

Unfortunately, fiber isn't widespread or available in many places; most Internet customers are going to have to rely on the big, more than notorious ISPs: Comcast, Time Warner, and AT&T.

How Fast is Your Connectedness

If you're unsure what your connection speed is, you should test it.

Results are displayed according to iii metrics, latency (ping), download throughput and, of course, upload, which is the number we're about interested in.

What is Latency?

Aside from the obvious download/upload numbers, in that location's latency, which is measured in milliseconds (ms). Latency should be lower than higher.

It might be easier to think of latency equally response fourth dimension, but the determining factor with regard to latency is length. How far away is the server you're trying to communicate with? In the following screenshot, we see the server we've pinged is about 100 miles away or 161 kilometers, which is a 362 km roundtrip.

Light travels at 300,000 km per second. So, if our connection were perfect, we could see a a i.8 ms ping fourth dimension (362/200,000). Obviously, it isn't a perfect connection, and information technology takes quite a bit longer (but 38 ms isn't terrible).

A more farthermost example – we ping a server in Sydney, Commonwealth of australia over 8000 miles away, or a 26,876 km round-trip. Because of the distance and the finite speed of calorie-free, even with a perfect connection, it would still take 134.iv ms. So, you tin can have all the bandwidth in the globe just you can't escape physics.

In our test, it takes 243 ms, which is unacceptably long. That'southward because on its trip halfway around the world, our data has to hop from server to server.

Even a short trip to a more than local server is going to have to go through several hops before information technology it gets at that place and back, which is why it takes 38 ms to ping a server only 100 miles abroad.

Thus, latency is going to affect the overall speed of your connection. High latency only ways that information technology will take longer for a packet of information to brand a round trip from your computer to the remote server and then return to y'all. Unfortunately, in that location's not too much you an really do most latency, and it tin make even fast connections feel boring.

Psssst … Don't Forget Your Overhead!

Another thing y'all can't really control is overhead. What is overhead? Information technology's kind of complicated, but basically, you never get all the bandwidth bachelor because a portion of it is lost for things similar turning your data into packets, addressing it, dealing with collisions, basic inefficiencies in networking technologies, and other factors.

So no matter what your connection speed is, you always accept to requite upwards a portion of that to overhead. How much y'all give up to overhead will depend on the those above-mentioned factors but ideally it should exist around 10 percent.

How Long Does it Take Your Connectedness to Upload Data?

Many cloud services now offering a terabyte or more than of storage – Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and and then on.

A terabyte is a considerable amount of capacity, comparing well to desktop reckoner difficult drives, and far outpacing tablets and phones. Therefore it'due south a nifty place to keep your stuff and admission information technology from nearly anywhere, or use it to offload information you want to archive just not go on on local storage.

Thus, nosotros calculated the time it would accept to upload 1GB, 100GB, and 1000GB (or 1TB) of information using mutual upload speeds: 1Mbps, 2Mbps, 5Mbps, 10Mbps, 20Mbps, and finally, only for kicks 1000Mbps (1Gbps), which are the speeds Google Fiber advertises.

i GB

100 GB

chiliad GB

1Mbps

2.v hrs

ten days

99 days

2Mbps

1.25 hrs

v days

50 days

5Mbps

28 min

2 days

20.iii days

10Mbps

xiv min

i twenty-four hours

10.2 days

20Mbps

7 min

12 hrs

5.one days

1000Mbps

8 sec

fifteen min

ii.v hrs

Our calculations are rounded to the nearest minute and include ten percent connection overhead. Keep in mind that if your overhead is more than than ten pct, and so your transmission times will be even greater than the data presented in our table.

If Y'all Want Higher Upload Speeds, Set to Pay Up!

It'due south pretty clear from the results that upload speeds don't actually start to become usable until they striking 20Mbps. Uploading a terabyte in less than a week isn't that bad. Sadly, to get 20Mbps, at least from a cable Internet provider (Comcast, the worst one of all), is going to set you dorsum almost $115/month!

$115 doesn't really seem reasonable for monthly home Internet service. We're disinclined to spend more than $l/month on Internet, and what you tin can become for that much isn't terribly jaw dropping (2Mbps to 5Mbps).

And so, for the time being, you're stuck with what Internet providers offering and charge for it. Obviously, if you take admission to fiber, attempt to get with that but understand that, too, is going to price more (though arguably a far better value).

When all is said and done, however, regardless of how much you tin can afford, pay closer attention to that all-important upload number because it tin actually affect how fast your connectedness feels almost as much as your download speed.

We'd like to hear now from you. Do yous have slower upload speeds? Are you lot stuck in the grayness surface area between fast enough and dial-up? Our discussion forum is open up and we'd like to hear your feedback.