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by tpmx 2452 days ago
Do they still have a very slow upload performance with their backup service? That's been the main complaint I've been reading over the years. (I'd probably be happy with something in the range of 50-100 Mbit/s.) (My home connection is 250/100.)
3 comments

Yev here -> try it now. We've spent the last few updates honing in the way we handle uploads and have introduce threading to make the process more efficient. We'll always be bottle-necked by the available bandwidth to your machine and latency, but it's worth trying again if you haven't for a while!
Sure, but you surely you have stats? And why is latency a factor - surely you can work around that by improving your network protocol (think less TCP, more QUIC or something similar, etc)?

Anyway, okay, I'll test your trial again. :)

This speedtest is somewhat accurate and is pointed to our data center so should give you a decent idea of speed -> https://www.backblaze.com/speedtest/. The reason latency is a factor is that it affects how quickly data leaves your computer and gets to our data center, so if you're far away, it can play a factor!
Thanks.

> The reason latency is a factor is that it affects how quickly data leaves your computer and gets to our data center, so if you're far away, it can play a factor!

Not to be an ass.. but.. uh, there does exist ways to defeat latencies in order to bring up throughput. But Backblaze isn't aware of them after more than a decade in the business?

Unless I missed some setting it seems like the speedtest is only for the US data center(s). Is there any way to test the speed to the EU data center?
Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze.

> Is there any way to test the speed to the EU data center?

Create a free Backblaze account in the EU datacenter region. Then upload/download some data! The first 10 GBytes of B2 is 100% free, you don't even need to give us a credit card so you can try it all utterly risk free with no way we could mess with you.

If you run the Backblaze Personal Backup, make sure you manually configure it to use 30 threads, then let it rip and watch your bandwidth meter to see what it can use. The first 14 days are completely free, again no Credit Card required! Personally I get about 100 Mbits/sec from my home in California to the European datacenter (capped by my ISP), but if you are in Europe you should be able to hit 500 Mbits/sec using the Personal Backup Client with 30 threads if you are close enough to Amsterdam (where the datacenter is). Oh, one hint -> don't judge Backblaze Personal Backup until you have been backing up for at least 12 hours. Backblaze backs up small files first, and the latency to push 1 byte files murders performance. But after we get through all your small files, it should rip.

In the end, everybody has enough bandwidth to reach everywhere in the world now, and you really shouldn't pick a service based on total throughput. I think you should pick it based on cost, comfort with the security model and how sensitive your data is, ease of use, etc. Unless you have a Petabyte or more of data, you can backup hundreds of TBytes to anywhere in the world nowadays. Easily. No problem.

Yev here -> we're actually working on an EU version of that site as well so you'd be able to toggle!
They have a bandwidth-checker so you can see what throughput you'd get to their data center: https://www.backblaze.com/speedtest/
Even before this new 7.0 version, I was able to get ~90Mbit/s, but had to use multiple threads; it was roughly 3Mbit/s per thread; I set it to 30 threads, got ~90Mbit/s total throughput. This was in August; should test it again with this new 7.0 version when I have another big batch of uploads.
Thanks!