On Sat, 03 May 2008 12:52:33 +0000, Goran Ivanic wrote:

> Assuem I want to transfer large amounts of stuff from one server to
> another (through Internet).
>
> Which method should I prefer:
>
> ftp or rsync ?
>
> What are the Pros and Cons?
>
> Which is faster?
>
> Which is more stable?
>
> Goran

http://stromberg.dnsalias.org/~strom...s-of-data.html

rsync is good at picking up where a prior transfer left off. rsync
defaults to ssh, but can use rsh or similar instead. ssh is too CPU-
intensive to get decent performance on gigabit or better networks even
with contemporary CPU's, but there are patches to openssh that take Some
of the performance hit out of it.

And as Robert said, ftp (and rsh and NFS) are not encrypted, so don't use
them to transfer anything you need to keep private (unless you combine
them with mcrypt or similar). These tools are fine for copying something
you'd be putting on a public web site anyway, for example (even without
mcrypt).

NFS is actually a pretty good performer on gigabit and better networks,
because it's able to make good use of jumbo frames. This despite NFS
giving lackluster performance on 10BaseT and 100BaseT. NFS reads are
quite a bit faster than NFS writes.

ssh (including with rsync), ftp, rsh (including with rsync) and NFS are
all pretty stable, though NFS is perhaps a little less so depending on
the implementations involved.

rsync gives OK progress information - not stellar. Modern ftp clients
like tnftp (formerly lukemftp) give good progress information. ssh and
rsh and NFS don't give progress info, but can give quite good progress
information if you combine them with a tool like http://
stromberg.dnsalias.org/~strombrg/reblock.html (there's a short list of
similar programs at the bottom of the page).