iCloud Photo Library upload killing internet connection

Preferences ?? where do I find the way to select the timing of down/up loads? I've de-selected most of the applications to stop automatic storage, but couldn't locate the preference selection on the timing.

I am using a TPLink AC1200, aka Archer C5 modem and having the same problem with what appears to be a dead internet connection. Ping usually returns a server not found error. It is intermittent and will come and go with no action from me. Is it my imagination or is OSX getting buggier with every update? Off topic, but El Capitan is creating havoc with many USB audio interfaces.

I had significant issues uploading all my photos when the feature became available that I could only upload them at night. Things went relatively fine for awhile but recently I have been having touch and go problems with my internet for the past couple weeks. Even though all my photos have been uploaded and I only add very few a week. I notice it's not just Photos though. It also happens when I upload a lot to iCloud Drive or backup my iPhone or iPad to iCloud. Basically, any large upload to iCloud. I now have the NLC installed on both my Macs so hopefully that fixes the majority of the issues but I think my internet still may go to a crawl when my iPhone and iPad want to backup.

Do you need a developers license to download the NLC? I can't seem to find it? When I click on the link provided it comes to the down loads page but nothing show up? Sorry new here.

EXACTLY! I have subsequently disabled this potentially fine feature since it timed-out my web searches on my iMac and made Netflix unwatchable. I have a cable modem which isn't horrible: 25 Mbps download and 2.0 upload. I'm back to strong photo on my Mac to take the burden of 5000 photos on my iPhone and iPad and see that my images are still up in the iCloud should I want them (excluding the newer ones).

Strangely, after having this problem and turning off iCloud sharing on my Mac for several days, the problem has gine away. I have added several thousand photos to my Photo library since then, waiting until I have imported them all to my local library including adding date, location, description, faces and other such information, including creating albums, before finally turning on the iCloud sharing feature and in less than an hour the iCloud library was updated and showed the same number of photos as my local library with no apparent internet connection issues. I have had albums disappear in the local library and then reappear, and other strange issues but the "I'm breaking your internet connection" problem has not reappeared so is inconsistent.

However, once the iCloud library was updated, my iPhone drained its battery very quickly downloading the updates (even with the optimize storage feature enabled) so I recommned keeping Photo syncing off on mobile devices if you make large library updates, turning it on only when your device is charging.

And BTW, I love that Apple Mail treats updates from its own support communities as junk mail. 🙂

I'm having this problem as well. Since I didn't really want to disable this feature all tohether, I was looking for a workaround. I ended up using a program called Radio Silence to simply block "cloudd", the sync process for iCloud Photos. This way my iDevices can still use the iCloud library, and my Mac won't kill the internet connection. The problem now, of course, is how to get the pictures synced to my Mac.

Same here with the latest version of Yosemite however this has been occurring since I purchased the Mac 3 years ago.

I store home videos on Icloud. I upload these videos via my MacBook Air which is connected to my network via an Apple USB ethernet adaptor. When I do this it virtually shuts down the Internet to all other devices on my network. Our household has 2 wireless networks, 2 iphones,2 ipads, 3 android devices 4 WIFI secutity cameras, Smart TV and a Windows XP computer connected at any one time. I have limited connectivity in my area (~8MBPS Down, 1MBPS Up). The SpeedTest app confirms this.

When I upload video's the results drop to a ping of ~2963, DL of ~0.05-0.01 MBPS / UL ~.05-0.08MBPS resulting in all devices on my network being unusable on the internet.

The only way I can work around this is using the QOS on my Billion router to limit the MacBook bandwidth access to around 25% up and down with internet access priority set as low for traffic both in an out.

This is a pain as it can take over a week to upload a 15 minute video (@1080p) and I cannot use the MackBook for normal internet access at reasonable speeds until the upload is complete.

Here we are over a year since this thread started and I have been struggling with this issue for 6 months. I have 10mb down and 1mb up and a combination of windows and mac and ps4 and xbox running happily.....UNTIL .... you plug in an iphone or ipad and they start to backup to icloud. If I turn off the photo backup in the backup settings it doesnt happen. When the photo backup is turned on It takes less than 2 minutes to completely lock up the entire internet connection. I have had this happen on multiple versions of IOS and Mac software and on a variety of different ipads.

I started by getting the cable modem replaced with a new model and that made no difference. Next I tried 2 different routers. Each one more expensive than the last. One was a netgear dual band and now I have the latest ASUS AC1750. All with the same results. When the apple devices back up to the cloud with photo backup turned on they bring the cable modem to its knees. The new router even shows me in the diagnostics that the cable modem is effectively down when this happens. I have to reboot the router to get any other traffic flowing. Once the backup starts back up it crashes again. The only way to survive this is for nobody else on the network to do anything while an apple device is backing up.

I have talked to the ISP and the modem mfg and the router mfg and they all say this is a known issue with backups to icloud. I am really surprised that Apple doesn't fix this problem. I buy too many devices from them to feel like I should get used to them ignoring things like this.

Do you have the Photos library set to optimize photos? This can create a great deal of extra traffic on an ongoing basis. Especially if the libraries are large. iCloud and Photos communicate back and forth about available space and make adjustments in real time. So, if you have 1000 optimized photo thumbnails on a phone when you start, and are adding 200 photos, the process re-evaluates the thumbnails for all 1200 photos and may have to send them to the phone.

I am not using the icloud photo library. It is turned off. This is just from the backup of photos from the iphone or ipad to the cloud when the unit is charging.

Oh.. are you starting an iCloud backup when you connect these devices, or is it just the iCloud sync happening? Without photos, the amount of traffic should be minimal.

If you just want to charge the device, maybe toggle Airplane Mode while attached.

I understand completely all the ways to avoid the problem. But my point is that the problem should not exist and I shouldn't have to avoid it. I should be able to plug in an iphone or ipad to charge and have them backup photos or apps or anything else I want to back up. I shouldn't have to turn off the photo backup to keep the problem from happening. I also shouldn't expect all other traffic on my network to come to a stop, but it does. We aren't talking about thousands or even hundreds of pictures. Once I got past the initial backup it only backs up new pictures or videos. That might amount to tens or twenties and should not be causing this issue, but it does.

But, the problem does exist.

I offered a coping mechanism. Pardon me then. Rant on my friend.

I am sorry. Turn off my photo backups should be an acceptable solution? Or put it in airplane mode so that it never backs up? Why should I find that as an acceptable alternative? Why isn't fixing the problem an option??