Lan sync is slower than normal sync?

[Lauri I.]

We have a small office where all the computers are connected with ethernet cables to a gigabit local area network. Our Internet connection is also a really fast optical 1000/100 M. All the computers are high end MacBook Pro's and few PC's running the latest software.

We are still experiencing really slow syncing on dropbox even if we see that the files are being synced via LAN in the dropbox client. We noticed that if we disable LAN sync, the speed actually increase 2-5 times.

We experimented a lot with disabling all speed limitations, enabling and disabling LAN Sync but the LAN Sync performance still seems very slow. Any insights on this? Even if we have a fast internet connection, we feel funny syncing everything via cloud instead of the computers in the gigabit ethernet.

I googled about the topic and found other people are experiencing the same but no solutions or explanations on how the LAN sync actually works.

[Jay · Accepted solution]

Hi Lauri, have you checked the following page to ensure that the firewall and port are setup to allow LAN sync to function to its full capacity?

[Ioan Vlad V.]

The LAN Sync, well, simply it doesn't work, everything is set as it should be, i tried all the twiking possible. And i am an IT engineer. It's just impossible to sync 1.5 TB, with the LAN Sync, from PC within the same network. It is running for 3 days&night already, continuously, and it's still at 50% synced. Where is the LAN Sync?? Definetly not working!

[Ioan Vlad V.]

Not to mention SSD drives, Gigabit LAN AND Gigabit Internet Bandwith!!! 

[Computeruser76]

Solution didn't work for me.  0.6 kb/sec using LAN, 6,000+ kb/sec with LAN syncing switched off.  Dropbox allowed through Windows firewall.

[Jay]

Hi @Computeruser76, thanks for posting on the Community!

If you are concerned that LAN sync is not distributing files quickly through your network, please keep in mind a couple of things.

LAN sync does not begin for individual files until the file is hashed and fully synced for the first time in the host machine. Once the file is ready, LAN sync is able to host this file for 5 simultaneously connected clients. When the file has been synced to those clients, it is able to share that file with 5 additional clients.

If you need a more in-depth explanation about Dropbox Lan sync, I'd recommend reading our blog post.

Hope this helps!