very slow upload of photos to cloud

I left mine for 24 hours and it uploaded around 200.

It is killing my cable internet connection, and taking forever to upload photos. I have to keep resetting my modem.

Same here. I signed up for iCloud storage now that photos can be uploaded by the mac app and it took about a week to upload 2700 pictures. Over 16000 to go... at this rate I won't have my photos backed up for another month. My internet connection seems OK though, it doesn't even seem that Photos is using much upload speed. Is there a way I can tell it to max out the upload? I leaving the mac on overnight to help get these to iCloud ASAP.

Did you ever get all your photos uploaded to iCloud? I've been uploading my wife's photos for three weeks around the clock and it is still not finished.

Upload speed is very slow (about 80 Kbits/sec -- 10% of my DSL upload max speed). She had about 110 GBytes of photos (including a LOT of videos) a total of 16,000 items. (I assume a video is one item and could be hundreds or thousands of photo frames, each several MBytes, filmed at 30 fps.) I see it stop on an item and move up to 5 Gbytes of data before the item number decreases by one. (That is hard to watch, kind of like watching paint dry or grass grow).

I have the MBP, running ElCapitan 10.11.1, connected directly to the 1 Gbit Ethernet switch via cable and have turned off WiFi on the MBP. Not sure if that makes a difference. Seems to be slow in either wire Ethernet or WiFi (5GHz Airport Extreme). I notice some problems with other computers on my network when this is uploading. Latest check shows about 5,000 items with about 14 GBytes of content to upload. Could be several more days!

Any suggestions as to how to speed this up? Has Apple throttled down their iCloud servers?

I work for an ISP and I can confirm iCloud is killing internet connection and Apple never addresses it. Below shows someone with iCloud running killing their internet. They have a 12Mbps and 2Mbps upload plan and it takes up all of their upstream(upload). Even on 5Mbps it just soaks it up.

Thanks for the comment, ISPGuru.

We have been uploading photos and videos from my wife's MBP for over four solid weeks now. Makes you wonder why Apple doesn't address this. It is going very slowly. Seems to go more slowly the more we upload. There are some large videos, and I suspect that is making it worse.

It is moving one item every four or five hours (around 5 Gbytes of data on each item). She had a total of 105 Gbytes of data, 15,000 items. I have tried both direct connect Ethernet and WiFi. Doesn't seem to make much difference.

It's interesting to watch. When you pause it and then resume, it takes a while to get going again. It starts with a screen showing how many items to be downloaded. That decrements very slowly, I mean Very slowly. Then it will start telling me how many GBytes of data have been uploaded and how what the target is. It hits the target and then it stops reporting the GBytes uploaded, still very slowly decrementing the items even more slowly.

I wonder if it pays to pause it. Wait a couple of hours and then restart it? That usually will give you a new data goal, which really isn't the total left to download. Each new "goal" is different and there is always more to upload.

I have a slow upload DSL (max of 900 Kbits/sec). It's not going up that fast, as near as I can estimate 10% of that rate. I think Apple's servers can't handle all of the traffic. They probably have them throttled down, making things take even more time. Then when the data get uploaded. All the photos and videos are downloaded to each of the devices in that network (iPhones, iPads, and desktops). Download is much faster, but still takes a long, long time.

I'm seeing problems with my browsers not being able to log on to websites. I have to switch between direct connect and WiFi and then back on my iMac 27" and sometimes that will let the browser find the website.

My upload wasn't as bad. I only had about 20 GBytes of data with about 9000 items and smaller videos to upload for my nearly new iMac. Even so, it took me nearly a week uploading around the clock to get that done.

Faster upload DSL is not available in my area. Only other option is to switch to Comcast and I'm pretty invested in Dish for TV and it would be difficult to change my TV network to Comcast.

I guess this has been going on ever since they changed the way that Photo works with iCloud earlier this year. (When they updated form iPhoto to Photo). I also wonder if ElCapitan is having problems with this. I understand that there is an update to Photo coming out soon. Maybe that will help.

I'd quit, but we are so invested in this that we have to see it through.

Are you also uploading photos to iCloud?

As you say there is no difference if you're wired or wireless when uploading to the iCloud. You are still capping your upstream channel causing packet drops and unable to browse sites. This is due to data being locked up on the upstream and that information needs to finish sending before you can receive new data. It's frustrating as the people at the Apple "genius" bar turn customers away saying it's the internet service that's the issue. Customers tend to believe them since they have the name "Genius" as their title lol. But what do we know right? I have called their support line for customers to see if they have some information on it but I just get a script monkey saying they have no idea what I am talking about. Hopefully it's resolved. I have proven time and time again it's the iCloud and people think if they change providers it will fix it but bandwidth is bandwidth...

yep - exactly what I thought - for storage only - an external hard drive is probably the best thing going unless you have FIOS, and I sure don't even have it available in my area, and even when/if I do, I doubt I will be able to spend the extra $$ to have it. 🙂