The Bandwidth Math Behind Choosing Snowball
~8 min read
A concrete way to reason about when physical transfer beats the network, rather than relying on intuition alone.
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Key points
- •Compare: dataset size ÷ sustained bandwidth (network transfer time) vs. device lead time + shipping (Snowball time)
- •A rough benchmark: even a strong 1 Gbps link moves roughly 10TB/day under ideal, uncontended conditions
- •Snowball jobs typically complete in one to a few weeks including shipping, largely independent of data volume within a device's capacity
- •Large dataset + limited timeframe + limited/shared bandwidth is a strong, calculable signal toward Snowball