Although I didn't read the article, having just assumed it was shit based on the title and publication, "routing through the cloud" does slow things down with Dropbox, often dramatically.
I have gigabit fiber at home, and a 100Mbps link at work. BTSync syncs at about 5MB/sec which is close to real world SFTP speeds between those locations.
Dropbox sync speeds are on the order of a few hundred KB/sec, and sometimes an abysmal 50KB/sec. That's to the Dropbox cloud, and then it takes even longer to actually sync out from the Dropbox cloud to the other location.
I have gigabit fiber at home, and a 100Mbps link at work. BTSync syncs at about 5MB/sec which is close to real world SFTP speeds between those locations.
Dropbox sync speeds are on the order of a few hundred KB/sec, and sometimes an abysmal 50KB/sec. That's to the Dropbox cloud, and then it takes even longer to actually sync out from the Dropbox cloud to the other location.