Comments on: SCP vs RSync vs SMB vs FTP

By: M

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:52:26 +0000

Test results using a test file created from /dev/zero will be completely bogus due to the almost perfect 100% compression ratio. (This is why SCP beat FTP.)
Try it again with a file created from /dev/random and the results will be completely different, (and far more applicable to the real world).

By: anonymous_coward

anonymous_coward — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 08:03:44 +0000

There is no way SCP beat FTP!!

Something has to be wrong with your testing methods.

FTP can saturate the wire easily, and without the additional burden of compression or encryption that comes with SCP/SFTP.

rsync has even more computational complexities and burdens than even SCP as it is hashing the whole files, and performing a rolling-hash of the file contents, deallign with the file on two sides, etc.

Also I noticed you did not compare NFS.

I would suggest you create a file of random data instead of all zero. A good idea would be to use a DVD iso image you can download online, and other people can reproduce the results. You might also like to purge your filesystem buffer cache before or after each successive test run to ensure the file is not sitting in memory instead of on the disk.

By: James

James — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:08:31 +0000

Your hint with the -c arcfour saved my day, i was struggling to copy a 75GB file (which was already a LUKS-encrypted container) within my network. estimated time was something around 80 Minutes. I could not believe that transfer time was reduced to 15 Minutes due to the -c arcfour switch!

Thanks for sharing this, you are my hero!

By: Endless Nameless

Endless Nameless — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 06:09:55 +0000

I think rsync uses more time when on some files when it is trying to figure out if to use delta encoding or not. Which is the main pro over scp.

By: Endless Nameless

Endless Nameless — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:11:18 +0000

Very good article. I sometimes compare rsync and scp. The time varies to me, depending on file. If it is text files, rsync is faster. If it is images or movies that I want to copy, scp is the winner. But is first time that I see the arcfour flag. I will check it. Thanks.