Weird Request re internet cable connection.

seachto7

Hi all,

Weird request but someone might be able to point me in a good direction.

Work out of the folks home currently via wireless, and am in the process of uploading all my music to the "cloud".

It's taking ages on the wireless, and is slowing things down, so I abandoned that for now.

Would a net cafe allow me to plug in to a network and upload?

Or any advice? I guess the only option would be to ask someone if I could plug into their network with a cable and do it that way?

Do net cafes do this?

Stuxnet

wired is obviously better then wireless, but you're only as "fast" as your isp provided upload connection speed, generally speaking basic residential connections will be less than half MB/s upload, so if you're uploading full sized high res photos/music(several MB's a piece it will take forever on a connection like that.)

A cafe might be a better idea, presuming they don't throttle their connections, ideally find a friend or colleague that has a fibre connection would be your fastest option

seachto7

Yeah, I'll look into it. I'll try some net cafe's...

banie01

Even if you find a café that allows you to plug in(I'm assuming most will)
You will still be faced with the fact that they likely have an at best 10/15mb upload and that this bandwidth is managed to be shared across all their LAN so it will be throttled via whatever network switch and manager software they use.
If you have a friend/neighbour with a UPC connection that may be your best bet?
I get @17mb upload via wired on mine and there's not much available direct to consumer(Business is obviously diff) that will beat that.
And couple to the fact that even at a 10mb upload speed in a cafe, it will take quite a while to upload a significant amount of data, meaning multi-hour even days waiting on an upload while tied to your laptop.

seachto7

So, skydrive/google music is just a load of auld boll*x if I want to put all my music on the "cloud"?

As in, it's going to take forever

redron74

seachto7 wrote: »

Hi all,

Weird request but someone might be able to point me in a good direction.

Work out of the folks home currently via wireless, and am in the process of uploading all my music to the "cloud".

It's taking ages on the wireless, and is slowing things down, so I abandoned that for now.

Would a net cafe allow me to plug in to a network and upload?

Or any advice? I guess the only option would be to ask someone if I could plug into their network with a cable and do it that way?

Do net cafes do this?

By "via wireless", what do you mean? Is it a 3G connection, or a landline/cable connection via wifi?
Also, is there a monthly traffic limit on the account?

If it's a 3G connection, you could just bring the laptop and dongle to a place with a stronger signal. That would improve your upload speed.

If it's a landline connection, then the upload speed is always going to be a fraction of the download speed.
For example, I just checked my router status page, which shows a download speed of ~50Mb/s and an upload speed of ~15Mb/s at the moment. I'm on Eircom eFibre.

I have no experience of cable connections, but surely someone here with UPC will be able to tell us what speeds they get.

The speeds available at the internet cafe you choose will be subject to the same criteria as above.
I would think it would be awkward for an internet cafe to allow you to walk in and plug your laptop into their ethernet network. That would probably require moving other computers around to facilitate you. But maybe some places would have an easily accessible ethernet socket on the wall. But you could always bring in an external drive to plug into the usb port on one of their computers.

If you don't know how to check your connection speeds from your access point, you can use www.speedtest.net, which will give you a fairly accurate reading. Results can vary widely on this, so try it a few times using different servers to get an overall view.

seachto7

I'm using a landline connection/wireless. (It's not in my house, so kind of reluctant to max it out here!)

I do know someone working in a net cafe, so maybe I could ask them if I could bring in the hard drive and connect it up to a computer. I could work away on the computer...

redron74

seachto7 wrote: »

So, skydrive/google music is just a load of auld boll*x if I want to put all my music on the "cloud"?

As in, it's going to take forever

Yeah, it'll take ages anyway. It'll even take a good while on the fastest connections available.

If I'm uploading stuff today at 15Mb/s, in theory it would take approx 1 second per minute of music if you are dealing with 256Kb/s mp3 files. Then add a certain overhead for the number of files and the amount of fragmentation on your hard drive (unless its SSD).

In practice 15Mb/s peak would probably average out at 12-13Mb/s over a reasonable period of time.

seachto7

It's 5,000 songs, and I have them stored on an external drive...

redron74

seachto7 wrote: »

I'm using a landline connection/wireless. (It's not in my house, so kind of reluctant to max it out here!)

I do know someone working in a net cafe, so maybe I could ask them if I could bring in the hard drive and connect it up to a computer. I could work away on the computer...

Maxing out the bandwidth at any particular time is not an issue, unless there are other people using the connection at the same time.
The real issue is whether it's an unlimited account or whether there is a monthly limit.

If it's definitely an unlimited account (you'll need to check the terms and conditions for their definition of "fair usage" to find what their limit on "unlimited" is), then just be patient and prioritise the order in which you upload your music.
Remember, you should only be using the cloud to access your music and films if you don't have access to them locally. The hard drive in you computer is 1000+ times faster than your internet connection.
If you have older network equipment at home, you probably have 100Mb/s wired and 54Mb/s wireless connectivity (1Gb/s and 150Mb/s or 300Mb/s on newer equipment) on your internal network. A network attached hard drive is probably the most practical solution for most households, as long as you can afford to spend the 5-10mins it takes to organise and transfer the files to your playback device whenever you want to listen to stuff away from home.

seachto7

Ah, I see what you mean. Maybe I should just buy another hard drive, and copy everything over, and hide it away for safe keeping...

The BIG EEJIT me went and spend €37 on extra storage for Skydrive, before I even researched what I should be doing. BIG EEJIT indeed....

redron74

seachto7 wrote: »

Ah, I see what you mean. Maybe I should just buy another hard drive, and copy everything over, and hide it away for safe keeping...

The BIG EEJIT me went and spend €37 on extra storage for Skydrive, before I even researched what I should be doing. BIG EEJIT indeed....

When 4G networks are well established and there's proper 3G fallback, and when landline/cable internet speeds are 100Mb/s then there'll be no issues.

Even on my eFibre connection, you still have situations where a video on Youtube or RTEplayer stalls or where a streaming radio broadcast drops out for a few seconds.

A friend of mine uses an analogy of watching a film on telly when you have the dvd. Why would you? The quality of the dvd will always be better than the broadcast version, for a number of reasons.

seachto7

I'm more ticked off that I spent €37!

Seems like the best solution is to just copy what I have to another drive and keep it safe.

redron74

seachto7 wrote: »

Ah, I see what you mean. Maybe I should just buy another hard drive, and copy everything over, and hide it away for safe keeping...

The BIG EEJIT me went and spend €37 on extra storage for Skydrive, before I even researched what I should be doing. BIG EEJIT indeed....

It all depends on how you listen to your music. What do you use to play your music when not at home?

5000 songs would be approx 40GB of high quality mp3 files.
Phones have been taking 32GB memory cards (actually approx 29GB of storage) for a few years now, so I'm sure there are a few high end phones/mp3players that will take the new standard cards with capacities of 64GB and more. I'd say these will become more common and more affordable in the near future.

redron74

seachto7 wrote: »

I'm more ticked off that I spent €37!

Seems like the best solution is to just copy what I have to another drive and keep it safe.

So you signed up primarily to use it for backup purposes?

What do you get for the €37? And is that an annual fee?

seachto7

I bought extra storage so now I have 107GB...

GarIT

If you download the SkyDrive app you get a SkyDrive folder, when creating that folder you could put it on the drive with the music, then you just copy the music to your SkyDrive folder and it will sync in the background as you use the computer. It won't be instant but it also won't be something you have to watch forever.

seachto7

At the moment, all the album folders are in skydrive, but none of them have any songs/files in them? Synching problem? Or just very very very slow.....?

GarIT

seachto7 wrote: »

At the moment, all the album folders are in skydrive, but none of them have any songs/files in them? Synching problem? Or just very very very slow.....?

How are you uploading it?

seachto7

I just copied the files from the external drive into the skydrive folder on my desktop, I don't see any other options....?

GarIT

seachto7 wrote: »

I just copied the files from the external drive into the skydrive folder on my desktop, I don't see any other options....?

You may have run into an issue a lot of people dont notice. There are two ways of uploading, you can upload by logging into the site and clicking upload, or by installing the app and dropping files into the folder. When you put something in your SkyDrive folder it makes 2 copies, one on your laptop and one on SkyDrive, if you dont have the space free on your main internal hard drive you can't use the folder method unless you go into the SkyDrive app settings and move the folder to a drive where you do have space.

seachto7

Hmmm.ok ill get a look in the morning. What i am doing is probably wrong....

seachto7

So, if I just delete the files in there and start again, but this time upload the files via skydrive.com instead?

At the moment, the "target" is C:\Users\User\SkyDrive

Only other option I would have would be to put the skydrive folder on my external drive as well...

GarIT

seachto7 wrote: »

So, if I just delete the files in there and start again, but this time upload the files via skydrive.com instead?

At the moment, the "target" is C:\Users\User\SkyDrive

Only other option I would have would be to put the skydrive folder on my external drive as well...

That's about it, unless you want to make 40GB of free space on your computer, but I assume that is the purpose of the external drive in the first place.

seachto7

I reinstalled the skydrive, but it's installed on the C drive again. How do I install it on my external drive, or change the target folder...

TheChizler

seachto7 wrote: »

I reinstalled the skydrive, but it's installed on the C drive again. How do I install it on my external drive, or change the target folder...

Surely you can have the Skydrive program monitor files of your choosing? On the hard drive for instance? Instead of having to sign in to Skydrive and manage songs individually whenever you change something, the program would just monitor the folders on the hard drive.

seachto7

This is where I am stuck.

Screenshot 1 shows the current target.

When I try to change it to an address of a folder on the external drive, I get an error message (screenshot 2)

TheChizler

If you're in any way technical minded you can use this guide to basically create a shortcut from your Skydrive to your external hard drive. Skydrive will think the external drive is in the Skydrive root folder, which as far as I am aware you cant change.

Basically:

To start a command prompt as an administrator (alternative method)
Click Start.
In the Start Search box, type cmd, and then press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER.
If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Continue.

then

mklink /d “%userprofile%\SkyDrive” E:\Cloud_MUSIC

That will link all of Cloud_MUSIC to the folder "Skydrive".

So it will look like C:\Users\%userprofile%\SkyDrive\Cloud_MUSIC to the skydrive program.

seachto7

Tis double Dutch to me, but I'll have a go at it....

TheChizler

seachto7 wrote: »

Tis double Dutch to me, but I'll have a go at it....

Let me know! If you follow that exactly it should work... You could copy and paste that command line into the command prompt (right click > paste, not control + v) to avoid typing it out again.

seachto7

Not working for me.

When I open CMD I get C:\Users\User>