Christopher Humphries: The Internet Version

I decided to give Mozy a real shot. It has many nice features and what really sold me on it was the ability to restore via the web, even from different machines.

Here is how ridiculous the upload speed is, from my work, which is a datacenter with bandwidth speeds that are hardware limits (with obvious overhead of protocols, etc):

From reading the FAQ at https://mozy.com/support, it states:

I have LOTS of data. How long will it take to back up?

For a typical system on a typical broadband line, Mozy backs up data at about 2-4 GB per day. But if left undisturbed on a fast connection, you can back up over 9 GB in a single day.

You may experience faster or slower speeds depending on your connection. You may want to check your favorite bandwidth meter test to measure your broadband connection. Here is one from Speakeasy that we like to use. You will be uploading to the Mozy servers when you back up, so pay attention to the “Upload” part of the test results.

Ok, so that makes sense… we all know cable companies seriously limit the upload ability of their internet clients to boost the download speed (which is obviously more desirable).

So, I sent a support email:

The connection at my work, a datacenter and ISP, is very fast yet why is the upload speed to your servers so slow? Is this on purpose or a bug?

I know the documentation states the speed of upload, yet thought that was relative to cable internet clients.

Using http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ as stated at https://mozy.com/support:

- San Francisco
Download Speed: 14554 kbps (1819.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 11153 kbps (1394.1 KB/sec transfer rate)

- Dallas
Download Speed: 22945 kbps (2868.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 13207 kbps (1650.9 KB/sec transfer rate)

- New York
Download Speed: 76350 kbps (9543.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 9608 kbps (1201 KB/sec transfer rate)

Why am I only uploading at under 1000 Kbits/sec, usually around 700-500?

Thanks,
Christopher

Here is the reply I got back:

Hello there,

Is your bandwidth being throttled either by the mozy program or by your work? If the internal network busy at your place of business? Where are you located in the world? Many things contribute to the “slower than theoretically possible” bandwidth issue.

Thank you for choosing Mozy Remote Backup Software for your online backup needs.

Best Regards,

Joe

Now there is nothing on my end blocking upload speed, unless it is a silent “feature” of the Mozy client. Also it is much much “slower than theoretically possible”. Here is the reply I sent:

I don’t see a bandwidth throttle option in the Mac home client, if there is how can I change it?
Bandwidth is not throttled by my work.
The internal network is not busy to slow this down.

I am located in Scranton, PA, we have multiple high bandwidth lines of fiber, so hardware limits from the office to the net.

Do your servers rate limit? Would you like a traceroute?

This is a pain as I have files I want to back up and it states that it will take days, this is a laptop and I got on and offline all the time, so would have to keep restarting for a week just to get the initial backup done.

Thanks,
Chris

Hopefully they’ll fix whatever the problem is. This upload speed to their servers is just not fast enough. If it was fast, I’d be nothing by praising the service.

What a pain…

UPDATE

I quit Mozy yesterday, deleted my account and uninstalled the software. It is just too slow. I am now using JungleDisk (which I’ll blog about shortly).

Here is the response I got this morning (the following day) about this issue, basically “just wait and let it finish”… yeah, right.

Hello there,

I see - I don’t know why but it didn’t occur to me that you were on a mac. We cap unlimited and home users at 1Mbps upload speed, and aside from that we have no constraints… I am leaning towards the idea that there is a bottleneck between us somewhere causing you to not reach the full 1mbps, but it’s difficult to test that.

I suggest just letting it upload when you have time, and eventually it will finish. If you are uploading a very large file, try not to interrupt it because it will restart that file when you resume next time.

Thank you for choosing Mozy Remote Backup Software for your online backup needs.
Best Regards,

Joe