Dropbox web keeps dropping uploads after a few minutes saying I have no internet

Hey kachunyu!

Yes, that makes sense since you had general issues with both the website, and the app.

Did these problems start when you switched to your cable internet? 

Have you checked in with your ISP to check if the Dropbox domains are in any way blocked or limited?

Hi Nancy,

I was able to connect my home laptop to a fiber connection and was able to copy PDF files without any issues to my Dropbox account using the Windows app. The files show up almost instantaneoulsy in the sane folder on my web browser. So there is a serious problem when Dropbox connects with my cable internet at home.

Thanks for keeping me in the loop, kachunyu! It sounds like this could be a network/connection issue then, but let me know how it goes when you manage to test this at home, as well.

Hi Nancy ,

I still haven't been able to test my laptop at home on a different network.  But I just confirmed that a laptop at work running Windows 11 and the Dropbox 216.4.4420 app runs fine through a fiber connection. I'll try to get my home laptop through a non-cable network to check if this is indeed a network issue.

Also I've only been testing with single file uploads and syncs.

Thanks for this info, kachunyu! Besides that new file that you’re trying to sync through the desktop app, is it also currently syncing any other files or is it the only one? 

Please let me know when (and if) you manage to test this via another network; I’m curious if there will be any kind of difference.

Hi Megan ,

I'm not able to switch to another network right now, but may be able to later tonight.

But to do further testing, I just copied a 15 MB PDF into a Dropbox folder through the app on my laptop about 25 minutes ago, and it's still syncing. (Speedtest.net does show a significant  slowdown in my upload rate currently to about 0.5 Mbits/sec.) I have Dropbox open on both Chrome and Firefox and am periodically reloading the folder I copied the file to, to confirm that it has not shown up on the server yet. Putting my mouse over the Dropbox icon also shows the sync is still ongoing (along with the Dropbox version):

I can't remember exactly when these problems with Dropbox first started to appear, but it could be as much as 9-12 months ago.

Hi kachunyu, let me also jump in there!

So it seems like we have two points here: one with how the website uploads content and one with the app, specifically when you use the sync now function. 

As a first step, would it be possible to try uploading content using a different network/connection, to see if you get those same results again?

Also, when did this behavior first appear?

Can you also hover your mouse over the little Dropbox icon on your task bar, next to your WiFi and clarify the version of the app that you're using?

Hi Nancy ,
I get the same problem when I switch to Incognito mode on Chrome. Here it is stuck trying to upload a 1.1 Mb file:

I get a different problem when I use the Dropbox app on Windows. I can open up my Dropbox folders in the Windows Explorer, and copy files from another Windows Explorer folder. This can often work, but I also get problems where I tell Dropbox to "Sync now" with the servers via a drop-down menu link:

In this case the syncing can also take extremely long. At least it runs in the background when I do this, so that eventually it gets uploaded. But sometimes it's taking too long for my immediate nneds, so I switch to the browser version ... and then I switch again if what I'm using starts to slow down ...

Hi kachunyu! I’m sorry to hear this is happening.

You may have already tried this, but do you notice the same issue when uploading files to our website from an incognito window instead?

As for the desktop app, are you seeing the exact same error message stating that you don’t have an internet connection?

Since I haven't seen a resolution in this discussion, I'll post and say I have the same problem with synching from a Windows 10 machine (not a Mac!) on both the desktop app and through the website via the browser (I've tried Chrome, Firefox, and Opera). I've had problems with files of all sizes--nothing bigger than a couple hundred MB--but currently, I'm running into the "Uploads paused" brown banner with a message near the filename "Paused - no internet" for 469K or 1015K PDFs!

I don't have any VPNs or firewalls that traffic is going through at home. We had to switch to cable internet (Xfinity Comcast) which shouldn't be restricting traffic to Dropbox domains. It has slower upload speeds, but testing shows it's typically ~20-30 Mbits/sec so a megabyte-sized file should not be an issue.

In these situations when the upload has "paused", I'll cancel and retry. Sometimes I'll walk away from the computer and eventually the file gets synch'ed up perhaps hours later. But it's pretty frustrating to see that 20% of a 1 MB file has uploaded after 1 min, but then the browser is stuck on the rest of the minuscule file before Dropbox gives up with the brown banner of death:

I regularly upload gigabyte-sized videos to YouTube without an issue with my current network configuration. Is there something fundamentally wrong with how Dropbox is talking to its servers from my computer?