Questions FTP'ing over my network

I need to FTP a lot of data to a device on my local network and so far it's going smoothly, I've been using the FlashFXP client (but not FXP itself) and everything's transferred without incident - the only problem is it's pretty slow. The device I'm transferring from is connected via Wifi-N to the router on the 5.8ghz network (but for some reason it never maintains a 300mbit/s connection - it wobbles between 150 and 300 despite being right next to it) and transferring at a steady ~5mb/s - but I'm wondering if I'd be better served connecting it wired to the router. The problem is the LAN card is only 100, it's not gigabit, so would it be pointless as the Wifi-N connection is faster?

Also is it normal for a folder with a bunch of files to take longer than a few very large files, even if the very large files are larger than the folder? I transferred ~20GB in an hour last night and it was a couple dozen files, now I'm transferring a few hundred but the total size is only ~8gb, but it's taking MUCH longer.

 

100mbps Ethernet is faster and more consistent than Wi-Fi in almost all cases so you'd be better off using wired.
I assume you meant 5MB/s that you are able to achieve via Wi-Fi. You could achieve twice that and a bit more with 100mbps Ethernet.

The other part seems justified too- big files tend to transfer more smoothly than small ones although it's hard for me to say right off the bat if isn't too slow.

 

hm well my thinking was Wifi-N = at least 150mbit/s and the wired was 100mbit/s, but since it was transferring at significantly less than either rate (5bm/s = ~40mbit/s, right?) changing to wired wouldn't help matters much - as it must be a software issue or something

 

You should be able to do at least 8-10Mbps over a wired 100baseT. Try using FileZilla, with connection type set to active since your behind your FW. You only need it on your pc, provided you have file sharing turned on at the other end.

 

All devices connected to the same router share bandwidth. So if you're going from one wifi connected device to another, you've halved your speed just there (plus some for transaction overhead). If wired is available, it will always be more stable and almost always faster. Even if wired is only available for one "side" of the connection, that will likely double your throughput assuming they're both connected via wifi right now.

 

The server is wired, client is wifi-n. I changed it from Passive to Active without any speed gain.

I'll try it wired on both ends and see if it makes a difference.

 

Sure enough I have a fivefold speed increase when I wire the PC to the router. Things are going between 25-30MB/s consistently. I really don't get it, it's just a Fast Ethernet port, it's not even Gigabit Ethernet - how can it be so much faster than Wif-N?

 

It's a common misconception- people think that 300mbps Wi-Fi is faster than 100mbps Ethernet while in fact 300mbps Wi-Fi is (on average) a bit slower than Ethernet. You can hope for real-life file transfer of 80mbps out of 300mbps connection.
Since yours is hovering between 150mbps and 300mbps you've had no chance of achieving this- your 40mbps seems reasonable for 150mbps connection.

 

Why though?

 

Mainly because of overhead which is huge and partly because of data retransmission when something is not OK in the first try.

 

Wifi sucks ):

 

For large file transfers, it's not as good as wired.
That said, I do not mind doing large transfers as well, though there are limits. I'm able to sustain 100MBit speeds over wifi (roughly 8-11MB/sec sustained transfers).

 

I do a lot of wireless file transfering myself. I don't have physical access to the server or router themselves, and I'm pretty sure the landlord wouldn't much like me running an ethernet cables through the walls.

Thus, wireless. Like Goof, I hit in the neighborhood of 8-11 MB/s for large files or a series of smaller files.

I don't use FTP, though, for my in-network transfers. The server and my laptop are both running Win7, so folder sharing helps out.

 

Sadly only one device is running Windows, so that's not an option. I'm almost done with the transfer though. I'm staging it over a week, so far I've got about 120GB out of 200.

 

Connect the 2 using a crossover cable, turn sharing on, and do the line transfer. Full Speed ahead on a Gige. Too bad you don't have access.

 

I think some of it may be FlashFXP being kind of a lousy client, at least for transfers with a lot of small files vs a few giant files. Can anyone recommend one that does simultaneous transfers? Is CuteFTP still around? I remember using it well over a decade ago.

Also what's the difference between FXP and FTP? I had never even heard of FXP prior to installing FlashFXP. (note: this is just out of curiosity, I can't run an FXP server on the destination device)

 

I used to do this back long ago before I knew the risk. Back then I was using FlashFXP, good client back in the day.

FXP provides the convenience to do file transfers between two high bandwidth machines with a low bandwidth middleman.

 

I'm not sure what you mean. What risk? FTP has been a safe way to transfer data for decades.

and what do you mean by your explanation of FXP? It allows clients connected to the same server to directly transfer to each other?