CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-colaboratory
Fanli Wu
Fanli Wu

Reputation: 29

is google colab training speed affected by our internet connection?

I've looked for some questions and mostly they discussed dataset uploading, but one did state that google colab only use our internet connection to run the code. I am confused with this, does this mean our internet speed also affects the training time of our model? or what matters is that once we ran our code, the google server takes care of it, and do not need our connection?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 5283

Answers (2)

Sourav Roy Chowdhury
Sourav Roy Chowdhury

Reputation: 23

Totally depends on one's internet speed.

  • Tried on mobile hotspot of Download speed 10Mbps, packages were downloaded at an average of 3Mbps
  • With house wifi at 150Mbps, packages were downloaded at an average of 20Mbps

Upvotes: 1

Eager-to-learn
Eager-to-learn

Reputation: 177

I think yes, Google Colab's speed is affected by our Internet connection. I'm not absolutely sure why, but you can check in this link. Obviously, when the model is being trained, the Internet data usage rises considerably. My guess is that our computer, as a client, needs to save some hidden internal information relevant to the running state. Therefore, the Colab server has to send this information every time 1 line of code is executed, and the next line of code can only be executed when this information reaches the client. So if the Internet connection is slow, it will take more time for the client to receive the information and the whole process will be slow.

There is also another proof to see if the Internet connection really affects Google Colab's speed. With the coffee Internet, which is significantly stronger than that of my house, the same block of code is executed more than 2 times faster than when using my house's wifi.

Upvotes: 2

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