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

[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.

[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.

[leeb]

Some definate food for thought in there, thank you. I know what my weekend is now going to consist of. Lots of research and conversations with developers.

[leeb]

Looking at some of those figures above, then it seems somewhere the info i have been given isnt quite right. Yes there were definatelty 500 images, yes they are approx 1.4-1.5mb each and the guys in the lab, said that it took a bit over 15 mins from when they send from the printing software to when they could work again.

This could mean....the printing software is already reducing the size of the upploaded files, and compressing them somehow. Which I wasnt aware of, but is definately possible.

The only reason we want a solution to upload the full image, is because we want to offer the facility for parents to DOWNLOAD instantly after payment their image. This is in the developers hands at the moment to be built in at some point, so I am looking to put something in place sooner rather than later. I will have to look into EXACTLY how it sends them out and exports them though, so thanks for pointing that out.

With regards to the comment about the photographers sending them, we have a team of approx 20 photographers who all FTP the images into the office, currently using Logmein which is not the best way, and also on my list of things to setup, dedicated FTP. The images are then edited, composited, colour corrected, so that the parents see an exact copy of what they are ordering, and it also allocateds Photo ID and passwords to everything as a unique number per image. This just cant work any other way, and the photographers are just the first step in producing the final product.

A guy in the office mentioned about MICROWAVE technology, but i havent been able to find anything about it yet, so any more info on that would be great.

Appreciate all your input.