If it is an important file you may want to tweak your Dropbox settings to see if it changes the download speed to the better. Dropbox is by default set to unlimited download rates. If you are experiencing download rates in the 5KB/sec to 20KB/s range and have a Internet connection capable of handling a multiple of that, then you may want to try the following configuration change to see if it changes your Dropbox download speed.

Open the Dropbox configuration. You do that with a right-click on the Dropbox icon in the system tray and the selection of Preferences from the context menu.

Switch to the Bandwidth tab there. Dropbox lists the settings for the download and upload rate in the menu. The download rate is by default set to “Don’t limit”, the upload rate to “Limit automatically”.

The trick here now, as reported by the Italian blog Computer Acquisti is to configure a custom download rate instead.

The author of the original article suggests to enter a rate that’s between 50% to 75% of the Internet connection’s bandwidth. Users with a high download rate, say 20 Mbit or more can alternatively add fix values, e.g. 1000 kB/s

Users who report less than optimal upload speeds may do the same for the Dropbox upload rate to speed up uploads to Dropbox this way.

You can also try and switch the proxy settings from Auto-detect to No proxy (if you do not use one) under Proxies.

Please note that Dropbox won’t necessarily use all of the bandwidth assigned to the download tasks. Users may see an increase over the initial lower download rate however. You may also want to consider throttling your upload speed rate in the case that it gets maxed out constantly when transferring files to the Dropbox server. This may have an influence on the download rate.

Dropbox recommends doing a speed test to an east coast server in the US to simulate download and upload speed to their servers.

Are you using Dropbox? If so, what is your downloading and uploading experience?

Some users may even leave the page if they think that the upload takes to long, or will not complete at all.

Upload Progress is an add-on for the Firefox web browser that keeps tracks of uploads, so that the progress of each upload is always visible in the browser. This aids the uploader in determining the remaining time for the upload, something that would not be possible to find out otherwise.

upload progress

It displays the website or service the file is uploaded to, the upload speed, remaining time, and the data that has already been uploaded and remains to be uploaded.

These information can also be helpful on websites that do not show the upload speed or data that is left to upload, but only a percentage bar.

The Uploads window can be launched from the Tools menu after installation, much like the Downloads window can. It is however different from that window, as it removes uploads from its interface once they have been completed.

Still, Upload Progress can be a helpful add-on for users who have to work with sites or services that do not show enough information about uploads in progress.

The add-on UploadProgress is compatible with Firefox 3.5 to 4, and available for download at the official Firefox add-ons repository.

Several well known file hosting services, such as Rapidshare, Divshare and Megaupload, are included in the upload service. The file has to be uploaded only once by the user which is a great advantage and will be distributed by the Tinyload service to the file hosters. It can take a while before the download links become visible.

A unique url is created during each upload that lists the links to the files on the various file hosting websites. This is ideal for posting at Twitter or Instant Messengers.

Tinyload is also accessible through a bookmarklet which comes in handy when something needs to be quickly uploaded.

RightLoad has several features with which it conquered a solid place in the applications that I use daily. Besides being able to set predefined directories on multiple ftps it can save the login information for those ftp sites which in turn can be protected by a master password to enhance security.

It is also possible to auto-create thumbnails if you do upload images. The user can set the maximum width and heights of the thumbnail and choose if he wants to be asked whenever an image is uploaded or if thumbnails should be generated automatically.

Links can be automatically generated if so desired, most of the time they are needed anyway when writing the article. Seems to have some problems with Windows Vista but should run fine in Windows XP and Windows 2000.

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RightLoad
via Freeware Genius