Most efficient way of transfering large files across a lan?

Thorbar

Hello everyone, I'm wondering if anyone knows the fastest way of sharing files across a lan? I have windows shares working but its awful slow taking nearly an hour to transfer a 5 gig image. I've setting up an ftp server at the moment filezilla but I'm getting a load of problems with this, and I have a feeling that ftp is designed more for smaller files over long distances.

I'm just wondering if anyone has a bit of experience with this or any other suggestions. Is there a wonder app out there designed for exactly this? Is it a good idea to set up a DC server and connect to it on the other machine?

Capt'n Midnight

What network cards do you have - wireless / 10 / 100 / 1000 ?

If you want to transfer data in a SNAP http://www.notes.co.il/benbasat/10991.asp !

Thorbar

Its between a desktop and a laptop, over a wireless.

Although the bandwidth is impressive on SNAP I think the latency would be a killer.

joe_chicken

it depends on how fast the wireless cards are on both the laptop and the desktop...
(my laptop one at home is only 11Mbps, while the one on my desktop is 54Mbps, it's still only going to transfer at the 11Mbps rate... you can check by double clicking the wireless icon in Network Connections)

Have you considered using an ethernet cable directly between the laptop and the desktop, this is probably considerably faster? (again though, depends on the speeds of the network cards, and whether you actually have them )

If you statically assign IP addresses to each network card and disable the wireless, you should be able to access each machine by typing it's address in the "run" box

i.e. start -> run -> type "\\192.168.1.6" where this is the IP of the other machine

Just My View

If it's a once-off, use sneakernet.

You can burn a DVD, walk across the room and copy it's contents to another PC in far less than an hour.
Or did I miss something?

Thorbar

I can already access files on each machine, using the standard windows file sharing service. That's not the problem, the problem is that its blindingly slow to do this. The wireless card in the laptop is 56mbps and the desktop is a 100 ethernet and is connected directly to the wireless switch.

I remember seeing an app called packman in the office which was amazing, it fragmented the file into 10 parts and opened 10 threads to transfer it, and this was able to speed up the file transfer by at least a factor of 4. I've since lost the app and can't find it through google. Was wondering if anyone knew of this app or a similar one.

Failing that would it be faster to set up an ftp server and use this instead? I can do this when I get home tonight just wanted to know if anyone else has been through a similar experience.

joe_chicken

Thorbar wrote:

I can already access files on each machine, using the standard windows file sharing service. That's not the problem, the problem is that its blindingly slow to do this.

I was just suggesting connecting it directly, as apposed to through a wireless network... you'd need to reconfigure the network card settings for that

and plus, you probably won't get a faster way of transferring other than a direct connect between 2 pcs...


But that's just me... carry on

Capt'n Midnight

Thorbar wrote:

I remember seeing an app called packman in the office which was amazing, it fragmented the file into 10 parts and opened 10 threads to transfer it, and this was able to speed up the file transfer by at least a factor of 4. I've since lost the app and can't find it through google. Was wondering if anyone knew of this app or a similar one.

Check what speed the network at work is then compare it to the speed you get on your wireless to make sure you compare like to like. Gigabit = 1,000Mb were standard oon corporate PC's three years ago. 11Mb can be 5.5 or less if poor signal. Also that's half duplex where as at work it's full duplex, ie stop and go traffic vs. free flowing.

http://www.7zip.org to compress the data first, but multimedia data is already compressed and can't be shrunk further.

_CreeD_

More connections = more protocol overhead = slower rates, it used to help sometimes with internet downloads but for different reasons, on a LAN it's a bad idea. Ditto for FTP, you're just encapsulating the data into FTP packets which again adds some overhead.

Try a traffic shaper like CFOS speed, it can optimise things like windowing to allow for better transfers over cleaner lines.

Foxwood

_CreeD_ wrote:

Ditto for FTP, you're just encapsulating the data into FTP packets which again adds some overhead.

It's a lot less overhead than SMB, so it would probably be considerably faster. But when it comes down to it, the real bottleneck is the wireless link, and monkeying with protocols isn't going to make much change there.

Plugging the laptop directly into the switch is the simplest way to speed this kind of transfer up.

Thorbar

Ok, it takes 2 hours to download a 5 gig file over a 700 kbps connection and than it takes an hour to transfer that same file over a 54 mbps line. Maybe I missing something here with "protocols" or else what I thought originally, the windows method of transfer shared files does not make full use of the networked connection. I'll try out using ftp when I get a chance tonight to see what the story is.

Stephen

Just bear in mind that you don't actually get 54mbps from your 802.11g connection. You get less than half of that at best. 54mbps is the signalling rate of the wireless link, not the actual speed it transfers data at.

Also 2 hours to download 5gigs at 700kbps? That seems a bit quick! Do you mean 700 kilobytes per second? If so that's about 6 Mbps. Given that it takes half the time to then transfer it over the wireless link, you're getting a transfer rate of about 12Mbps from the wireless connection, which isn't too bad when you take the protocol overheads and stuff into account. I doubt using FTP is going to make a significant difference.

Thorbar

Yeah you're right it is 700 kilobytes, guess I'll just stick the lappy into the switch from now on or else burn it to dvd.

nialler

5 gig over wireless are you crazy? Buy yourself a Dlink DGL300 router, it's gigabit (and wireless if required) you can pickup gigabit nic's for next to nothing and you'll tranfer 5 gigs over wired in no time.

Wireless is good for small stuff, not very efficient at larger files (I generally deal with extra extra large photoshop files and when required will wire up 2 macs to the gigabit router to transfer).