Microsoft Skydrive Throttle

I justed posted this one the answer.microsoft.com, but I thought I re-post this here. It was driving me crazy how skydrive was and there were several post on the answer forums at Microsoft. I did some digging and I found the reason why Skydrive is so slow.

I am using Windows 8 Pro and with the Skydrive 17.0.2003.1112 client

Skydrive client seems to have a throttle.

1. They are using HTTP upload.
2. Limits are set in an ini file

%localappdata%\Microsoft\SkyDrive\settings\ClientPolicy.ini

Edit: my friend couldn't understand the post, as I will elaborate on this some more. Adding comments now.

MaxClientMBTransferredPerDay = 131072 #Max client transfer in MegaBytes per day. It could be megabits, but standard convention is MB for Megabytes and Mb for megabits
MaxClientRequestsPerDay = 500000 #I will assume this means how many times a day the Skydrive client can request upload/download
NumberOfConcurrentUploads = 1 #how many uploads you can have going at 1 time.
AllowUserOverrideOfConcurrentUploads = false #set to true to override the NumberOfConcurrentUploads setting

Settings speak for themselves.

I did not change anything in my ini file because I assume MS will ban your account. Anyone want to give it a try? My thought is through the Phone clients do not have a throttle.


[full dump of the file]

[PolicySettings]
PolicyDocumentPollIntervalSeconds = 24134
BackoffOnErrorsIntervalSeconds = 134
PolicyDocumentPrefetchIntervalSeconds = 6134
BackgroundPollShortIntervalSeconds = 314
BackgroundPollLongIntervalSeconds = 88934
UploadBatchMaxFolderCount = 50
UploadBatchMaxDocumentCount = 50
UploadBlockSizeKB = 1048576
DownloadBlockSizeKB = 1048576
MaxFileSizeBytes = 2147483647
Tier1MaxFileSizeBytes = 262144000
Tier1FileInclusionList = |doc|docm|docx|dot|dotm|dotx|odc|odp|ods|odt|pot|potm|potx|pps|ppsm|ppsx|ppt|pptm|pptx|rtf|vdw|vdx|vsd|vsdm|vsdx|vssm|vssx|vst|vstm|vstx|vsw|vsx|vtx|xla|xlam|xlm|xls|xlsb|xlsm|xlsx|xlt|xltm|xltx|xlw|
MaxItemsInOneFolder = 150000
LowVisibilityFileExclusionList = ~$*.*|*.laccdb|Desktop.ini|Thumbs.db|EhThumbs.db|.ds_store|Icon\r|.lock
HighVisibilityFileExclusionList =
DavUrlMatch = ^(?:http|https)://([a-zA-Z0-9])+\.([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.)*docs(-df|-bvt|-s3|-gd|-current|-dev)*\.live(-tst)*\.net(?:\:[0-9]*)?/(?'cid'(?:[A-Fa-f0-9]*))(?'path'(\/.*)?$)
DocumentBackgroundPollIntervalSeconds = 3600
DavUrlTemplate = https://d.docs.live.net/{hexcid}/{path}
ShareUrlTemplate = https://skydrive.live.com/?cid={hexcid}&id={resourceid}&action=Share
PathEncoding = UrlEncode
OfficeProgID = Office.LocalSyncClient
OfficeRegKey = HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0
OfficeExcludeList = |
WacUrlTemplate = https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid={hexcid}&resid={ResourceID}&type=3&page=view
MaxClientMBTransferredPerDay = 131072
MaxClientRequestsPerDay = 500000
NumberOfConcurrentUploads = 1
AllowUserOverrideOfConcurrentUploads = false
SkyApiURL = https://skyapi.live.net
SkyDriveURI = https://by1.storage.msn.com/MyData/LiveFolders
SkyDriveItemsURI = https://by1.storage.msn.com/Items/{ResourceID}
SherlockEnabled = true
SherlockURL = https://rtlc.live.com/Sherlock/v2/TransactionReport
SyncHeartbeatEnabled = true
SyncHeartbeatInterval = 60
SyncVerificationEnabled = true
SyncVerificationInterval = 720
SyncProgressInterval = 60
SyncTelemetryURL = http://wlepsi3.redmond.corp.microsoft.com/SyncDiag.ashx
QosCollectionEnabled = true
SkyDriveURIServiceName = by1.storage.msn.com
SkyDriveURIAuthPolicy = MBI_SSL

Ah, that's why the upload of my files took more then a week. (55Gb of pics)

Yep I had the exact same issue.

I doubt that MS would punish you in some way for changing those settings, but I wouldn't mess with them. For example, the reason for the upload speed limit might be that SD has some sort of problem if the client tries to push files faster. Or the current SD can't really handle concurrent uploads from a client. I wouldn't ask for trouble by experimenting with those values.

Originally Posted by jim_h

I doubt that MS would punish you in some way for changing those settings, but I wouldn't mess with them. For example, the reason for the upload speed limit might be that SD has some sort of problem if the client tries to push files faster. Or the current SD can't really handle concurrent uploads from a client. I wouldn't ask for trouble by experimenting with those values.

You make some good points. There is a new Skydrive API that is out. Perhaps, that might shed some light on the scenario; as it will have to describe what limits it has. However, my bet is the Microsoft client will have higher limits that the API would provide.