Copy of Ftp

[Vibhor Kumar Agarwal]

Hi,

I have some machines across diverse location.
I need to transfer some files of big size.
Generally they take 24 hours or so.

I have both provisions of copying and ftp as we have made some mount points.

Which thing will be faster and why?

Thanks

[Ninad_1]

I would suggest one thing. why dont you compress the files and copy - so that you have to copy a small amount of data across the network.
I think you should copy rather than ftp as ftp will use UDP and hence there is no error checking/correction, whereas if you use copy it will use TCP and will be more reliable. As far as speed is oncerned , I dont see why there should be any difference, but yes there may be a slight delay in copying as for each file copying it will establish a session and then copy so the overhead of establishing the session for each file will be there as against the ftp session will be established once and all the files will be copied. So yes the copying may be a bit slower.

Regards,
Ninad

[Chan 007]

Hi
I agree with Ninad, but use gzip so that the file will be compressed more. Also my question is why not gzip & tar in one bundle and do a ftp. This will be good.

Chan

[Vibhor Kumar Agarwal]

Its a single tar.gz file but of size about 3GB.

And when are copying them across continents, the bandwidth is very low.

I am not concerned about error, just wanted the faster way :-)

[Ninad_1]

Vibhor,

My small piece of advice would be - not to have a single file to be transferred. because you said it takes around 24 hrs to copy your 3GB file , and if the connection is lost for some reason you would have to copy the file right from the beginning. So 1st thing is to have logical tar.gz for say a group of file/directories.
Second thing is since you are copying across continents the file must be going through a lot of firewalls or do you have a secured network ? Does the ftp session be allowed for 24 hr period ? or is there a default timeout or so ? If yes then copying will be your option.
Isnt it worth while doing some testing to see practically how its working for your setup and network links - because I feel this erally depends on the above factors, your preference for reliability of data and network bandwidth and setup.

Regards,
Ninad

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

rsync using ssh is viable. It works for sites with lots of small files that don't change frequently.

First time a file is posted it takes some time to copy. After an initial run rysnc only moves changed files.

If you are talking big and ugly and the file needs to move often the answer is bandwidth.

If its faster to ship the file on cd fedex then you need a faster pipe.

SEP

[Vibhor Kumar Agarwal]

We have a dedicated network, but the bandwidth is not too high.

[Arturo Galbiati]

Hi,
you can also use scp that allow the online compression. It's afster than ftp and not so complex to use. Type man scp to set options you need.
HTH,
Art