Data transmission speeds can be affected by various factors including the source location, the destination location, and the configuration settings of your Files.com site.

There are so many factors that can affect transmission speed that it is impossible to document them all. This article discusses topics that are most likely to affect transmission speeds when using the Files.com platform.

Network Hops and Region

Your Files.com site acts as an intermediary, or "hub", for data transmissions between a source (client app, user, local system, etc.) location and a destination (storage location, remote system, etc.) location. That means that your Files.com site is one of the network "hops" between the source and destination of a transmission.

This can be visualized as:

[ Source ] --> [ Files.com Site ] --> [ Destination ]

Data transmission speeds are best when all of these network hops are in the same region, such as:

[ US East ] --> [ US East ] --> [ US East ]

or

[ EU Germany ] --> [ EU Germany ] --> [ EU Germany ]

Data transmission speeds are slower when the distance between each hop increases.

Transmission speeds will decrease over long distance network hops, such as:

[ Australia, Sydney ] --> [ US East ] --> [ UK London ]

as well as over "boomerang" network hops, where the start and end locations are in the same region but the intermediate location is in another region, such as:

[ US East ] --> [ Singapore ] --> [ US East ]

The above examples are simplifications. In real life, there are more network hops between a source and a destination, such as ISPs, VPNs, and network proxy devices, but the same rules apply.

If your sources and destinations are distributed globally, we recommend using our global acceleration features and avoiding the use of our regional data routing features. This will provide the best data transmission speeds across the globe.

If your sources and destinations are located in the same region as your Files.com site's region, and you require data transmission to stay within that same region, then we recommend using our regional data routing feature. This will provide better data transmission speeds to connections within your region but at the cost of decreasing transmission speeds for connections outside of your region.

Data transmission speed when the source, your site, and the destination are within that same region has been found to be between 2x and 5x faster than when the intermediary hop is in a different region than the source and destination.

Site Storage Region

Your Files.com site can be configured so that its default storage location (top-level Root folder) resides in one of our available geographic regions. All subfolders will inherit this storage location unless explicitly configured for another location.

Data transmission speeds will be affected by the default storage location of your site as described above in the information about network hops and regions.

We recommend that you configure the default storage region of your site to be centrally located, or as close as possible, to your source and destination locations.

Although we love all our storage regions equally, we've found that our USA, Virginia region is the most high-performing region.

Folder Region

Our regional storage feature allows you to place folders in any of our available geographic regions. This means that you can implement subfolders that reside in other geographic storage regions.

Data transmission speeds to these regional folders will be affected by our global acceleration features and our regional data routing features.

When using multiple storage regions for folders, we recommend using our global acceleration features and avoiding the use of our regional data routing features. This will provide the best data transmission speeds across the globe.

When our regional data routing is implemented, all connections to your site will connect via your site's default storage region before being re-directed to the subfolder's storage region. This will decrease data transmission speeds due to the added extra hop. For example, if your site's default storage region is Germany, and the subfolder's region is Singapore, then connections from Singapore will route through Germany ("taking the scenic route") before reaching the Singapore subfolder.

Custom Domain and Dedicated IPs

Configuring a Custom Domain and dedicated IPs for your site will have no additional effect on data transmission speeds.

Your custom domain, and its dedicated IPs, are always located in the same region as the site storage region defined for the top-level Root folder.

Global Acceleration

Disabling our global acceleration feature will cause all data transmissions to your site's Files.com storage to funnel through your site's region.

This can improve data transfer speeds for connections within the same region but this will also decrease speeds for connections with other regions.

We recommend disabling this feature only if you never intend to use regional storage in other regions and expect few, if any, global connections.

Regional Data Routing

Enabling our regional data routing features will cause all data transmissions to your site's remote servers to funnel through your site's region.

When accessing Remote Mount folders, this setting can improve data transfer speeds for connections within the same region but this will also decrease speeds for connections with other regions.

We recommend only enabling this feature if you need to comply with regulations for ensuring that data isn't transmitted through the USA or other regions.

Remote Server Type

Files.com provides integrations with many types of remote server, allowing you to mount a remote server to a local folder, so that users can upload directly to storage on the remote server.

Files.com will stream data directly to the remote server, passing it through without storing it on Files.com.

Data transmission speed to API based remote servers (Amazon S3, Azure, Google, Akamai Linode, Backblaze, Box, Cloudflare, Dropbox, Filebase, Wasabi, etc.) is generally faster than to protocol based remote servers (FTP(S), SFTP, WebDAV) due to modern cloud solutions being optimized for data transfer over HTTP based APIs.

However, some cloud solutions, such as Box and Dropbox, implement strict rate limits. These rate limits can drastically decrease data transmission rates, sometimes making these types of remote servers even slower than protocol based remote servers.

Our fastest integration, which is comparable in performance with our native cloud storage, is Amazon S3, which is up to 5x faster than other types. When using regional data routing and traversing regions, protocol based remote servers are particularly affected due to the increased network latency introduced by the extra round trip.

The geographic location of these remote servers will affect transmission speeds, as discussed in the network hops and regions section. For example, if your site is located in Germany but your Azure Blob is located in US East then speeds will be slower than if your Azure Blob was also located in Germany.

The global acceleration and regional data routing features will affect data transmission rates with remote servers. For example, global acceleration will speed up data transmission with remote servers that are located outside of your region whereas regional data routing can speed up data transmission with remote servers that are within your same region.

Client Connection Type

The connection method of the client to Files.com can also affect transmission speeds.

Our web portal, SDKs, and APIs have been optimized for data transmission. These methods provide the fastest data transfer rates, between 2x and 3x faster, when used with Files.com storage and Amazon S3 remote servers.

Protocol-based connections, such as FTP(S), SFTP, and WebDAV, have also been optimized but exhibit different performance characteristics due to their underlying encryption methods and metadata overhead. These methods aren't as fast when used with Files.com storage and Amazon S3 but are faster, up to 2x, with other types of remote server.

The global acceleration and regional data routing features will affect data transmission rates for clients. For example, global acceleration will speed up data transmission for clients that are located outside of your region whereas regional data routing can speed up data transmission for clients that are within your same region.

Best Practices

Unfortunately, there is no single best practice that can address data transmission speeds as there is always a trade off between security and speed. For example, compliance regulations that need to be adhered to may prohibit the use of features that enable faster transmission speeds.

Customers with global connection requirements, or with remote servers in multiple geographic regions, should use our global acceleration features and avoid the use of our regional data routing features.

Customers with regional connection requirements, including those using remote servers only within the same region, can use our regional data routing features to meet data routing regulations.

Remote mount folders can be especially affected by regional transmission speed issues. Imagine the connection between Files.com and the remote server as a 20 lane highway and the connection between the client and Files.com as a 1 lane road. Uploading will stream to the remote server in only 1 lane of traffic, limited by the transmission rate of the client connection's 1 lane road, despite having 20 lanes available. However, uploading to Files.com storage is much faster, allowing you to use automations and remote syncs, which can both use all 20 lanes of the highway, to deliver the uploaded files to the remote server. Forwarding files to a remote server using automations and remote syncs can provide shorter transmission durations, especially across geographic regions. When regional data routing is enabled, using an automation to move uploaded files to a remote mount in another region has been found to be up to 25x faster.