iCloud Disrupts Internet Connection

I finally found the solution. A newly purchased Motorola Arris SURFboard SB6141 cable modem seemed to be causing the issue with iOS uploads. Certain upload functions, such as iCloud Photo Library, would cause my Internet connection to stop working -- both upload and download speeds would drop to 0Mbps.

I read in another thread about Texas Instrument chipset based modems causing issues, whereas Broadcom chipset based modems had no problems at all. I just switched to a Zoom 5345 Cable Modem and all uploads are working great now.

Yes, optimized is enabled, it's been on for a few months now. But, other devices that don't regularly take photos can cause this issue. Downloading data from the Internet never seems to be a problem in the sense that we regularly have 3 iPads streaming video at once. And this Internet connection issue on the router occurs even if there is no other traffic on the network.

For reference, my Internet connection is 15Mb/1Mb. It's odd that I'm the only one with this issue -- but it did take a lot of sleuthing to narrow it down, perhaps other people don't know why they're experience random Internet outages. I had the cable company inspect everything remotely as well as locally and all was fine. Maybe it has to do with my 1Mb upload speed? I'm stumped. I contacted the router company and they haven't been able to figure anything out yet either.

Thanks for your input. Just to follow up and put it to bed, I upgraded my Internet connection to 30Mbps/5Mbps, but that didn’t resolve the upload issue. After further testing, I was able to narrow down the cause of the major Internet disruptions to some specific apps and settings on my iOS devices.

For instance, once I turned off “My Photo Stream” on one iPhone, most of the disruptions went away. I also had to turn off the backup/sync on “Google Photos”, as it was choking my connection whenever it tried to upload movies, pictures were fine. And I also have to refrain from uploading videos with the YouTube app — if I upload from the Apple Photos app it works fine.

Everything else has been working so far, including iCloud Photo Library and iCloud Backup. I suspect the problem may be something odd on Time-Warner Cable’s end, but who knows. I tried 3 different routers and they all experienced this issue, I tried 2 cable modems, and millions of people have iPhones — but I’m the only one with my specific connection to the Internet.

I suppose you might be right about a 1Mbps upload speed not being enough to handle large uploads. Have you seen any recommended minimum upload speeds for iCloud usage?