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Online backups take a long time because the upload speed is much less than the download speed on an average Internet connection for home use. Most of the time it’s 1:10, meaning the upload speed is 10 times slower than the download speed.

Here is a list for some common upload speeds to get an idea of how much data you can upload per hour or per day.

┌───────────────────────┬─────────┬───────────┐ │ Upload Speed [Mbit/s] │ GByte/h │ GByte/day │ ╞═══════════════════════╪═════════╪═══════════╡ │ 1 │ 0.5 │ 11 │ ├───────────────────────┼─────────┼───────────┤ │ 2 │ 0.9 │ 21 │ ├───────────────────────┼─────────┼───────────┤ │ 6 │ 2.6 │ 63 │ ├───────────────────────┼─────────┼───────────┤ │ 10 │ 4.4 │ 106 │ ├───────────────────────┼─────────┼───────────┤ │ 40 │ 17.6 │ 422 │ ├───────────────────────┼─────────┼───────────┤ │ 50 │ 22.0 │ 528 │ └───────────────────────┴─────────┴───────────┘

The actual upload speed depends on several factors:

Do you have the upload bandwidth all for yourself or do other people at your home use it at the same time?

Do you really get the maximum upload speed your Internet provider promises you?

Sometimes the cable from your home to your provider is too long or very old and flaky and the speed suffers.

Maybe too many customers use the Internet with this provider at the same time, either in your neighborhood or somewhere else.

Or the hardware, the provider gave to you, is outdated because of a speed upgrade you may got yourself a while ago.

Is the wireless connection good and fast enough to achieve your maximum upload speed?

Is the receiving end of your data, e.g. the backup service, fast enough to support your upload speed?

Only if you can answer “yes” to all these questions you are able to achieve your maximum upload speed to have a fast online backup.

To test your upload and download speed you can use SpeedOf.Me.

How Long Does an Online Backup Take

Cloud Backup Upload Speed