Dropbox is slow and only uploads at fraction of download speed

I've started using Dropbox but I'm finding that my upload speeds are dropping down to the withering pace of 6Kb per second. I have checked my upload speed with speedtest.net and I get just under 1Mbs.

Is this due to preferences or settings on my install or would this be something out of my control and related to location or ISP?

Check your Preferences. By default, Dropbox doesn't limit download speed, but limits upload speed to whatever they think is sufficient.

It's my experience also, so I moved to Wuala.

From my experience Dropbox seems to slow down the speed when you have a lot of files to download (f.e. when you have a new PC that has to download the complete storage once). F.e. when I have to sync only 2-3 files then I get "normal" speeds of 700-800Kb/s. If the number of files to download are f.e. 30.000 then it's slows down to 10-60Kb/s.

So it seems like Dropbox is saying "oh you have to download a lot, let's bring down your speed otherwise our server will be tired ..."