FTP clients: is there a difference in speed?

[Ervin Farkas]

I am going nuts over the upload speed. I now have AT&T DSL and my FTP client (Total Commander) is reporting a whopping upload speed of... 12 kbps! I had Comcast cable before and it was working at 40 kbps - I thought they are somehow limiting me, didn't really bother calling them because I knew I was moving to a new address where they are not available.

I tested my new DSL speed with speedtest.net and got around 750 kbps down and 150 kbps up - I ordered DSL light for now, thinking I can switch to faster if I need.

So why this low, low, low upload speed? Is there a difference in FTP clients? Should I go for another one? Who is limiting me?

Thanks,

[Andy Mace]

Please give FileZilla a try. It does the job for me

http://filezilla-project.org/

[Ervin Farkas]

I am looking to find a little more info on this. I have used FileZilla in the past and it was working fine indeed.

Some FTP software developers claim their product is faster - does it really depend on the particular software, or is it more of an internet connection issue?

[Josh Chesarek]

Normally its an internet issue. Most internet connections only have fast download speeds not upload speeds. I have a faster than typical upload of 1MB or about 116K. The only time I have seen software come into play is when one is using SSL or SFTP which requires the software to do encryption decryption and if they programming isn't done well it will be slow but pretty much everyone has the programming figured out these days.

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

I am looking to find a little more info on this. I have used FileZilla in the past and it was working fine indeed.

Some FTP software developers claim their product is faster - does it really depend on the particular software, or is it more of an internet connection issue?

[Ervin Farkas]

I know about the difference in up/down speed, it is pretty much reflected in the tests one can do with online testing websites. And I know "real life" speeds are different from test speeds because a test only reflects my connection speed to the closest big hub (testing server), real life download depends on the rest of the network from the closest hub all the way to the server providing the content I'm downloading.

But while I can get real life download speeds at about 30-50% of the test speeds, I can only get about 5-10% of tested upload speeds.

How do you explain that?

[Josh Chesarek]

Well in the first post you said your up was 150 kbps. This is about 18.75KB total. In the first post you talk about a 40kbs upload when you were on cable so I assume you actually mean KB a second. If that is correct it sounds like you are getting the proper speed of 12KB a second for your DSL lite. The few KB lost is being used by the protocol making sure packets are getting there correctly.

The next question about not getting your rated speeds is a combination of your ISP not delivering what they say they can but it is often that the server you are talking to is busy. Most people used shared hosting which means they are one of many websites or services on a server meaning you will never get its full attention when uploading or downloading. This really reduces speeds. I rent a dedicated server and I can happily say that 98% of the time I get my cable advertised speeds of 10Mbit down / 1Mbit up to my dedicated server which is sitting on a 100Mbit line and I am one of the few people uploading to it.

I hope I was able to help.

[Ervin Farkas]

HUH? This is "all Greeek to me"!

My test upload speed is 150 kbps, my real upload speed is 12 kbps. Do you mean 92% is used up for overhead??? What's this kB/kb thing?

No, I was NOT referring to kB with my old Comcast, it was 40 kilobits per second, now it's 12 kilobits per second - b=bits/sec (transfer speed), B=bites (file size), correct? I can tell you this: a ~220MB file takes about 5 hours to upload, that's just unacceptable for me. I thought 40 kbps was slow, but now I'm really ticked off...

[Josh Chesarek]

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

HUH? This is "all Greeek to me"!

My test upload speed is 150 kbps, my real upload speed is 12 kbps. Do you mean 92% is used up for overhead??? What's this kB/kb thing?

No, I was NOT referring to kB with my old Comcast, it was 40 kilobits per second, now it's 12 kilobits per second - b=bits/sec (transfer speed), B=bites (file size), correct? I can tell you this: a ~220MB file takes about 5 hours to upload, that's just unacceptable for me. I thought 40 kbps was slow, but now I'm really ticked off...

The Speed tests/ISP report in kbps

your FTP program will report in KBs

I will have to make sure that I am using the correct terms but basically take the longer number, in your case 150 and divide by 8, this is 8bits to a BYTE. This gives you the expected kilo byte transfer speed.


One thing to note is that DSL "lite" as I have seen by many phone companies is just above Dial up. The average cable connection much faster than a lite package. You will likely need to step up to the standard DSL to get closer to your old 40K upload and even step up to a premium connection if you want to go faster.

With a connection of 750 kbps down and 150 kbps up you have a download speed of 93K and an upload of 18K

Download this zip file and report back the speed that your browser gives back to you:

http://www.simplethoughtproductions....d_wake_reg.zip

[Craig Kendall]

Ervin, what I think Josh is attempting to point out is that even though your dsl provider is giving you the ability to push out a certain bandwidth, the host to which you are trying to push it can't handle everything you can push.

This is fairly common, as he points out, with shared hosts. It' like you have a firehose and are pushing water into their garden hose. Doesn't matter how much you can push... your host's garden hose will physically only handle so much at a time.

Your speed test measured your dl/ul speeds between you and the test server. Not between you and your host.

Does that make sense? (I know... it's not the way we want it, but it is reality.)

I don't think you'll find a significant difference in dl/ul speeds between ftp clients. The speed they are referring to is probably more the time it takes their application to launch and respond to your commands.

Dedicated hosting is your most likely solution for better speed. What host are you using? Is it dedicated or shared? Some actually throttle the inflow also.

Hope that helps.

[Josh Chesarek]

I think the biggest problem is DSL lite in this case :-)

[Ervin Farkas]

Thanks, guys - things started to clear up a little.

I did not realize that the speedtest was in Kbps while the ftp client reports KBps, this is where the confusion was coming from.

[Nice video, Josh. Is that you on the board?]

[Ervin Farkas]

Originally Posted by Andy Mace

Please give FileZilla a try. It does the job for me. http://filezilla-project.org/

Andy, I can't thank you enough for reminding me about FileZilla! I used it years ago but moved away from stand-alone ftp clients since my html editor, Dreamweaver, has built-in ftp.

I just downloaded and installed it and I can't believe my eyes: it is 4x faster than Total Commander!!! I can't wait to go home and test on the computer I am normally using for these uploads - the reason I'm so desperate about ftp is that I have to upload a ~3.5GB file every week, a one hour TV show compressed in MPEG2.

This makes me believe that THERE IS difference between ftp clients, so I will keep testing with other software!

[Josh Chesarek]

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

[Nice video, Josh. Is that you on the board?]

Nah, I snowboard :-D

[Gints Klimanis]

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

I am going nuts over the upload speed. I now have AT&T DSL and my FTP client (Total Commander) is reporting a whopping upload speed of... 12 kbps! I had Comcast cable before and it was working at 40 kbps - I thought they are somehow limiting me, didn't really bother calling them because I knew I was moving to a new address where they are not available.

I tested my new DSL speed with speedtest.net and got around 750 kbps down and 150 kbps up - I ordered DSL light for now, thinking I can switch to faster if I need.

As another fellow pointed out, be careful about mixing kbps and KB. I had ATT DSL Elite for a couple of years, and my WSFTP client delivered nearly 80 KB (640 kbps). Some FTP sites are the limiting factor. My new Comcast delivers somewhere between 40 KB and 250 KB in my two weeks of usage.

There may be some weird issues with actual ATT performance. I had the same Elite DSL service and equipment at two houses. One house delivered within the specifications of the Elite service. The other house matched upload speeds but operated at 1/5 the download speed, as measured by speedtest.net and an FTP of the same file (up&down) to the same FTP site. So, I replaced the latter service with the Comcast.

Another issue is that ATT sells their service with the high part of the bracket. ... Up to XXX kbps.

[Ervin Farkas]

The fog is dispersing, I now understand the Kb/KB difference, or I should say I understand I made a mistake mixing them. I can't wait to go home and test FileZilla, see if it works 4 times faster than Total Commander.

There are 4 of us uploading to the same server, and one guy reports speeds of close to 100 KB/sec (he lives in the same city where the server is located, so understandably has to have the best speed). A neighbor of mine can achieve 55-60 KB/sec. I have no ideea why the people who started this whole thing (the TV show) recommended Total Commander...

Still if anyone has any info on speed differences between different ftp clients, please share that.

Thanks,