Measure the upload you actually have
Field connections are advertised by download speed, and uploads are usually far slower. What matters is the sustained upload rate at the place and time you will send the data, from the machine that will send it.
- 1Run an upload test from the sending laptop, at the time of day you would normally upload, on the connection you would use.
- 2Repeat it three or four times over an hour. Weak links vary; plan on the lower results, not the best one.
- 3Note any data allowance on cellular plans. Some plans slow down or charge more after a monthly limit, and one capture can use it up.
- 4Multiply the capture size in gigabytes by 8,000 and divide by the upload rate in megabits per second. That is the best-case time in seconds.
What each kind of field connection is like
| Connection | Typical problem | What helps |
|---|---|---|
| Cellular hotspot or router | Upload much slower than download, signal varies by position and time of day, data allowances | An external antenna or a router placed for the best signal, uploading at quiet hours, checking the plan's limits |
| Satellite | Long or variable round trips and short dropouts, so ordinary uploads slow down and stall | A transfer method built for latency and loss, and one that resumes after a dropout |
| Hotel or site Wi-Fi | Shared with everyone else on the network, sometimes with per-device limits or idle disconnects | A wired port if there is one, uploading overnight, a cellular backup |
| Regional office or partner site | Usually the best link within reach, but a drive or laptop has to get there | Planning a stop there for large captures instead of fighting a weak link |
Make the link go further
- Keep the sending machine awake and on power. Turn off sleep for the duration of the upload; a laptop that sleeps with the lid closed stops the transfer without any error.
- Use a cable to the router where you can. Wi-Fi adds its own loss and dropouts on top of the field link.
- Upload at quiet hours. Overnight uploads compete with fewer people on shared and cellular networks.
- Pause cloud drive sync, software updates and video calls on the same connection while the capture uploads.
- Send one capture at a time to one destination, so a slow link is not split between several half-finished uploads.
- Do not expect zipping to help with imagery. Drone photos are usually already compressed JPEGs. Point clouds are different: LAZ, the lossless compressed form of LAS, is usually much smaller, if the recipient's software reads it.
Choose a method that resumes
On a weak connection, dropouts are normal. The difference between methods is what happens next. Some uploads start the file, or the whole batch, again from the beginning. Others keep what has already arrived and send only what is missing. Over a long upload on a link that drops several times, the first can take many times longer than the arithmetic suggests, and sometimes never finishes.
Ordinary uploads are also built on TCP, which slows down sharply whenever packets are lost and speeds back up slowly on long round trips. Satellite and congested cellular links lose packets often, so the upload spends much of its time recovering rather than sending.
- 1Start an upload of a real capture, not a single test file.
- 2Part-way through, disconnect the network for a minute, then reconnect it.
- 3Check whether the upload continues from where it stopped or starts again.
- 4Repeat once more, then confirm the file count and total size at the destination match the source.
Send less from the field
Not everything has to travel over the weakest link. Many teams send a small sample first so the office can confirm the capture is usable before the crew leaves the site, then send the full dataset from a better connection or on a drive.
- First: flight logs, a few sample images or tiles and any field notes, so the office can check coverage and quality.
- Then: the full raw capture, from the best connection within reach, overnight if needed.
- Keep the cards or a checked copy until the office confirms the full capture arrived complete.
Know when to ship a drive instead
If the best-case upload time is longer than the time you have, no transfer method will close the gap. Decide the cut-off in advance so the crew does not spend a day trying.
| If the best-case upload is | Then |
|---|---|
| Comfortably inside the deadline | Upload from the site with a method that resumes |
| Close to the deadline | Send the check sample now and the full capture from a better connection |
| Longer than the deadline | Ship or carry a drive, and upload only the check sample |
Where Ripton Cloud fits
Ripton Desktop sends a capture folder as one encrypted package to a Ripton node at your office or in your own cloud account. The protocol is UDP-based with its own rate control and retransmission, built for high-latency, lossy links, and after an interruption it keeps completed work and sends what is missing. Keep Desktop running and the machine awake until the transfer completes.
Ripton Cloud does not improve the link itself. If the capture is larger than the link can carry before your deadline, a drive is still the right answer.