Cloud storage doesn’t have to be this slow
Symform is one of the fastest cloud storage solutions in the market today. While other cloud storage providers throttle your upload connection to save money on bandwidth costs at their data centers, our peer-to-peer architecture allows us to maximize your upload pipe by creating multiple parallel connections to upload your data. Instead of one throttled connection for upload, Symform can create dozens of connections simultaneously to maximize your upload bandwidth to get your data quickly to our cloud.
Makes sense, but then you are still wondering, “so why is my Symform cloud backup so slow?”
Even though our peer-to-peer network allows us to maximize your upload bandwidth, we still can’t (nor can the other cloud providers) defy the laws of physics. For example, if you have a DSL connection of 512kbps upload, giving Symform about 300kbps (since you can’t give us 100% of your upload bandwidth), and about 500GB worth of pictures, documents, and other files, and then you add-in the parity fragments, it can take about 270 days to upload this data. This is like trying to fill an Olympic size swimming pool with a drinking straw!
To give this a little more perspective, you can copy data to a locally attached USB 2.0 drive at 480mpbs. Transferring the same 500GB to a local USB drive (again with parity fragments) would take about 4 hours. We can only dream about transferring data at 480mbps over the Internet today, so until we get there, here are a few tips to make sure you can get your data into the Symform cloud in a timely manner.
- Determine what your actual upload speed is: You can either call your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and ask, or perform an online speed test from http://testmy.net. Often, ISPs will tell you/advertise burstable rates, so I would take their values with a grain of salt and still perform an online speed test from http://testmy.net to be sure. If there is a large discrepancy, you can call your ISP, but most likely they will say that all speeds are best effort and not guaranteed.
- Upgrade your bandwidth: If you do feel your bandwidth is on the smaller side and feel that your small upload pipe will not adequately satisfy your cloud storage needs, you can upgrade your bandwidth. Upgrading to the next tier or two for upload bandwidth with most ISPs is a nominal charge. The upgrade will give you the peace of mind knowing that all of your files are safely uploaded to the Symform cloud, not to mention a faster Internet experience overall.
- Choose a smaller amount of data to upload: But if your ISP cannot offer anything faster, or if the additional cost is just too prohibitive, uploading smaller amounts (i.e., crucial documents and files) will be the only option. Uploading just 10GB at 300kbps (after adding our parity fragments) will only take 5-6 days.
Maybe one day Symform can create new laws of physics and be able to transport your data instantly to the cloud. Until we can say, “Beam my data up Scotty!”, we can at least take advantage of a faster and cheaper Internet to move our files to Symform, or make the hard choice of which precious photos of Rex make the cut and try to appease the computer gods with a burnt offering to ward off digital disasters.
