3 ms·

I wonder what their ratio of ingress to egress bandwidth is. I would assume most people write more than they read from the service or does Dropbox actively push

I wonder what their ratio of ingress to egress bandwidth is. I would assume most people write more than they read from the service or does Dropbox actively push any changes to all devices?

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> or does Dropbox actively push any changes to all devices? I may be misunderstanding your question, but it seems to me that this is literally the whole point of the service. Dropbox is a folder that syncs. You change something on one device (one write), it updates everywhere (multiple reads). They do have some tricks to lower their bandwidth usage. AFAIR, if multiple devices are in the same LAN, only one gets synced with the cloud, and the rest sync to that one. Also, they have (recently introduced) a sync option, in which fake files are visible in your file system, but no actual contents get put on the drive until you try to open them.
- Namrog84 7y ago
  > "Also, they have (recently introduced) a sync option, in which fake files are visible in your file system, but no actual contents get put on the drive until you try to open them. " I thought that was a first in the earliest of versions and was one of my favorite. At some point they removed it and made you choose which folders to sync. At which point I abandoned using it. So maybe they are reintroducing it or I am misremembering something.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I've been using Dropbox since its early days and I don't remember seeing this feature until very recently. But it's possible I missed it in the past; I always treated Dropbox as a syncing service, not storage service, so I synced everything to every device (and later opted for selective sync on some devices; e.g. I didn't need a copy of my personal photos on a laptop I use for work).
- brazzy 7y ago
  The mobile clients only show you what's there and download on demand, at least that's the default.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    But it doesn't integrate with the file system. On the desktop (at least on Windows), you still have a regular folder that syncs, full of folders regular files that sync - except now, you can make some of those files and folders to only look real, but actually store no data on the drive itself, and transparently fetch it when needed. It integrates completely seamlessly with all the other software you use on the machine. (I think a good Linux analogy would be FUSE, things like sshfs.)

I wonder what their ratio of ingress to egress bandwidth is. I would assume most people write more than they read from the service or does Dropbox actively push any changes to all devices?

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> or does Dropbox actively push any changes to all devices? I may be misunderstanding your question, but it seems to me that this is literally the whole point of the service. Dropbox is a folder that syncs. You change something on one device (one write), it updates everywhere (multiple reads). They do have some tricks to lower their bandwidth usage. AFAIR, if multiple devices are in the same LAN, only one gets synced with the cloud, and the rest sync to that one. Also, they have (recently introduced) a sync option, in which fake files are visible in your file system, but no actual contents get put on the drive until you try to open them.

Namrog84 7y ago
> "Also, they have (recently introduced) a sync option, in which fake files are visible in your file system, but no actual contents get put on the drive until you try to open them. " I thought that was a first in the earliest of versions and was one of my favorite. At some point they removed it and made you choose which folders to sync. At which point I abandoned using it. So maybe they are reintroducing it or I am misremembering something.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I've been using Dropbox since its early days and I don't remember seeing this feature until very recently. But it's possible I missed it in the past; I always treated Dropbox as a syncing service, not storage service, so I synced everything to every device (and later opted for selective sync on some devices; e.g. I didn't need a copy of my personal photos on a laptop I use for work).
brazzy 7y ago
The mobile clients only show you what's there and download on demand, at least that's the default.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  But it doesn't integrate with the file system. On the desktop (at least on Windows), you still have a regular folder that syncs, full of folders regular files that sync - except now, you can make some of those files and folders to only look real, but actually store no data on the drive itself, and transparently fetch it when needed. It integrates completely seamlessly with all the other software you use on the machine. (I think a good Linux analogy would be FUSE, things like sshfs.)