Dropbox Lan-Sync and How It Can Save Your Internet Connection

Do you use Dropbox in your business? Dropbox is one of the “big three” players when it comes to cloud file storage solutions, alongside Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive. When dealing with cloud file storage, one of the concerns for personal users and business users alike is the amount of bandwidth consumed when syncing files to a remote server. When you have a combination of large files, a large number of files, and constantly changing files, this can add up to significant bandwidth overheads.

With default configuration, on file creation or change, Dropbox is set to update files in the cloud server/s first, then sync changes on any other accounts that have shared access. In an office configuration, this could mean Shelley creates a video to share for her presentation next week, and then the whole video file is synced to an offsite cloud server, before being synced with her other team members in the office.

Syncing files to cloud servers can quickly chew up business bandwidth

Let’s say Shelley shared her video without compressing it first. Her 20 minute video is around 4GB, and her team folder is shared with 16 other people. Syncing to the server uses 4GB of bandwidth, then syncing with the team (4×16) us`es 64GB of bandwidth. This is just one person, and one file. If each person in the team did this for the presentation, this quickly compounds: (4×17) + 17x(4×16) = 1156GB = 1.156TB. That’s just each person sharing one file for one presentation!

If you don’t configure cloud storage properly, you might find your business internet bill quickly blowing out.

Dropbox has a solution for that

One of Dropbox’s lesser-known features that is particularly useful for business customers is the LAN Sync option.

LAN Sync is designed to save you wasted bandwidth in your business. It eliminates all that back and forth data exchange to Dropbox cloud servers, and instead only does it once.

Rather than bouncing a file to the Dropbox cloud first when it’s created and shared, it instead bounces around your LAN network – only leaving your physical site once. This way, you don’t have to be forking over millions of dollars for your business internet account because of cloud syncing each month. There is no cost to distribute files across your personal LAN network.

Note that LAN sync only works with computers that are on the same subnet, or broadcast address.

If you are running virtual machines (that run Dropbox) within your LAN, then you’ll need to add an extra layer to get them to play properly with Dropbox’s LAN sync option.

We know cloud storage and networking
Looking for better storage and networking solutions? We can give your business a health check and see where your current solutions sit. Save resources by choosing the best configurations and products for your cloud storage and networking – we can help you do it. Reach out to A1 Technologies today and get the ball rolling.

Julia Sinclair-Jones

Tech writer and ex-software developer with a penchant for travel, techno, and data. Spreading the word of secure, manageable, optimised IT solutions for everyone.