what is the fastest possible upload connection???

[leeb]

hi guys,

I am a photographer, and will soon need to upload upto 5000 images a day to our website, so i need to improve the 300kbps i currently get on my bt business hub.

I need a business solition, with the fastest possible upload speed. The time i will lose on waiting for the uploads at this speed, will be more expencive than an increased tariff on ISP

What would you recommend? someone has mentioned satalite broadband, but this doesnt seem to be much quicker.

Our offices are based right out in the countryside, and i think we are about 4km to the nearest exchange, so a phone line based option probably wouldnt be best as i understand it.


Thanks in advance, need some advice asap.

Lee

Edited by leeb on Thursday 1st July 19:49

[paddyhasneeds]

If you go to SamKnows what services are available on your exchange?

[bonsai]

Something like 8Mb SDSL might be what you're after. 1:1 uncontended, will be quite pricey though.

Can I be nosey and ask what sort of things you're taking 5000 photos a day of?

[forty-two]

As suggested already, you need a synchronous service rather than asynchronous. You need to speak to a some ISP's and see what they can offer you but at 4km from a local serving exchange I think you will be out of the realms of a copper provided service which leaves fibre as the only option.

BT can provide fibre on poles so don't accept any quotes where they claim that they need to excavate for a duct.

And yes, I have provided fibre for rural locations. £200,000 for 5km was one quote.

[Soft Top]

What size are your 5000 photos - 5MB a pop or more? Or are they web sized images? How quickly do you want to upload them?

Assuming the above i.e. 5000 at 5MB then it would take aboue 7 hours at 8Mbit. Is that fast enough or do you need more?

Assuming the above i.e. 5000 at 500k then it would take aboue 42 minutes at 8Mbit. Is that fast enough or do you need more?

[Dave 500]

Have a word with turbofun he's always been really helpful when I've called him

Edited by Dave 500 on Thursday 1st July 21:07

[The_Jackal]

If you make a fair bit of money being a photographer it may be worth renting a small office near an exchange with a decent broadband connection.
It may be worth looking at this problem from a different direction.

I am interested too why you need to upload 5000 pictures a day, even paparazzi dont have that kind of throughput.

[leeb]

Soft Top said:

What size are your 5000 photos - 5MB a pop or more? Or are they web sized images? How quickly do you want to upload them?

Assuming the above i.e. 5000 at 5MB then it would take aboue 7 hours at 8Mbit. Is that fast enough or do you need more?

Assuming the above i.e. 5000 at 500k then it would take aboue 42 minutes at 8Mbit. Is that fast enough or do you need more?

as jpgs they are approx 1.5mb each, and this is the size they are exported at. Currently takes e approx 15mins to upload 500 images, which is just too long to be honest. We cant let it go overnight, as the system we use sends it as we finish editing and export. The editing system and website are all bespoke and linked in to work this way.

8Mbit sounds good to me, how do we get it, whats it called, and i appreciate its going to be a substantial cost, any ideas on ballpark figures?

bonsai said:

Something like 8Mb SDSL might be what you're after. 1:1 uncontended, will be quite pricey though.

Can I be nosey and ask what sort of things you're taking 5000 photos a day of?

No Problem, we are a school photography company.

[ukwill]

paddyhasneeds said:

If you go to SamKnows what services are available on your exchange?

I do hope they're only a couple of hundred K's worth of JPEG each. If you're talking 5000 multi-megabyte files, then you're looking at several hours per day (assuming 1:1 contention), even with a 4x2Mb/s bonded sdsl link.

You're effectively asking for the type of connectivity/bandwidth you would generally find a print press might have at their business address, but to your home.

[tamore]

i thought SDSL peaked at 2mbps, so you'd need to bond 4 lines together to get 8mbps each way.

leased line is probably the best way to go if what i've said is correct. mind you, 2mbps might be ok for you if you can currently do 500 files in 15 mins on what is presumably a 300kps upload speed.

Edited by tamore on Thursday 1st July 22:41

[leeb]

tamore said:

i thought SDSL peaked at 2mbps, so you'd need to bond 4 lines together to get 8mbps each way.

I only really need the upload speed, as we dont download the images back again, just code which tells the printing software what to do and where to find the image/package to print.

Would another option be to somehow compress the images BEFORE upload, and then send them. These would have to be duplicate files with the same name/number as the originals, so that the XML makes sence. This is all a bit out of my league if im honest, but its gotta be done, so im learning quick.

[tamore]

leeb said:

tamore said:

i thought SDSL peaked at 2mbps, so you'd need to bond 4 lines together to get 8mbps each way.

I only really need the upload speed, as we dont download the images back again, just code which tells the printing software what to do and where to find the image/package to print.

Would another option be to somehow compress the images BEFORE upload, and then send them. These would have to be duplicate files with the same name/number as the originals, so that the XML makes sence. This is all a bit out of my league if im honest, but its gotta be done, so im learning quick.

i don't think asynchronous lines exist where the upload is more than the download. if you do the sums on a 2mbps SDSL line, you will probably find it's fine. i think you can get them for about £200 per month.

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

I'd be tempted to post the printers SD cards to be honest. It'd be much cheaper.

[ukwill]

tamore said:

i thought SDSL peaked at 2mbps, so you'd need to bond 4 lines together to get 8mbps each way.

leased line is probably the best way to go if what i've said is correct. mind you, 2mbps might be ok for you if you can currently do 500 files in 15 mins on what is presumably a 300kps upload speed.

Edited by tamore on Thursday 1st July 22:41

It does yes, effectively the equivalent of an E1.

Yes, a leased line would do it, but good luck getting a leased line to your home address - unless you're lucky enough to live near a providers fiber run, let alone the exorbitant costs (setup and monthly).

[ukwill]

So, most importantly, what size are the images, on average?

[tamore]

ukwill said:

So, most importantly, what size are the images, on average?

1.5Mb i think. so 7.5 Gb per day.

[ukwill]

tamore said:

ukwill said:

So, most importantly, what size are the images, on average?

1.5Mb i think. so 7.5 Gb per day.

So just over 8hrs a day (1:1 contention), on a service providing 2Mb/s upload.

[lestag]

Lee, you may also be limited in bandwidth/useable upload speed or storage by your website provider.
It would pay to check.

[ymwoods]

Whilst having a higher upload rate is a good solution, it is expensive over the long term.

May I suggest that since you use a bespoke system, you contact the creater and ask that it can be changed so that when you save and export the image it saves it locally and then adds it to a list, which is then uploaded as a batch overnight? Or, even just that the functionality is added to the programe that it does all its uploads in the background so you do not have to wait for them to finish before you start work again. The program then simply keeps adding the newest images to the back of the upload pile as you work.

Obviously the above causes a backlog of images to be uploaded but I take it you do not work 24/7 so the system would "catch-up" overnight and probably be sitting doing nothing once you get back in the morning. It could be prudent to shift the tasks of uploads to a small server aswell? This would lessen the load on your current computers when working and uploading at the same time which will be a problem whichever solution you choose.

Whilst the cost of getting the software coder in to do this will be high in the short term, if your planning to run the business for a while and/or grow this seems like a much more cost effective solution to the current problem as its a one off cost rather than a recurring monthly one, which will soon add up to the coders cost anyway.

HTH

[lestag]

ymwoods said:

May I suggest that since you use a bespoke system, you contact the creater and ask that it can be changed so that when you save and export the image it saves it locally and then adds it to a list, which is then uploaded as a batch overnight? ....

Good idea, another variation (which i have done in the past) could be to have a copy of the website local (running as a virtual machine even). The bespoke software would post to this machine and then all you would need to do is to duplicate the website contents to the public website.

The additional benefit is that you have a backup of the website local in-case your website hoster dissapears...for whatever reason..

very little coding changes required.(ie cost)

Edited by lestag on Friday 2nd July 06:27