Dropbox is giving Australian users a performance boost with the opening of a new local point of presence. Running their own dedicated equipment in one of Equinix’s Sydney data centres, Dropbox’s Dan Iverson, the head of solutions architecture APAC, said the new PoP will act as a proxy server improving performance for Australian users. It follows on the steps of similar initiatives in other regions.
While Dropbox boasts that 44% of the ASX200 using Dropbox Business with almost all other companies in the ASX200 having some other Dropbox presence such as personal accounts.
“The point of presence will act as a proxy server. It’s there to further increase the speed for all Dropbox users in the region,” said Iverson.
It’s important to note that data will continue to be housed on Dropbox’s US servers. The only exception to this is a data centre in Germany which is in place to manage the specific data sovereignty rules in the EU.
While adding another proxy sounds like it will add another layer to the communications stack, Iverson said that Dropbox’s tight control over comms through the client and across the rest of their infrastructure allows them to optimise connectivity.
He stressed that this didn’t mean data would be stored in a new locations.
“We’re not going to cache your data around the world,” he added.
Having used Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive regularly I’ve found all three services to work well. But Dropbox’s performance has always had the edge. This move should see them further advance their performance lead over the others.
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