Dual-WAN Extremely Slow Out-Going FTP
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Hi everyone,
I'm at my wits-end with this problem, and have finally admitted that I need help. I'll try to give a basic overview or my setup, but if I miss anything, please let me know.
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pfSense Version: Latest Snapshot
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Two ISPs, both passing DHCP connections to my pfSense box. Connection speeds are 28 down 1 up for the first ISP and 25 down and 10 up for the second ISP.
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One LAN port
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Three routing groups, one for load-balancing, two for failover
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Firewall rule routing all LAN traffic through the load-balancing group
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Snort running, rules update automatically. Using premium rules.
My connection speed for FTP is horrible. I'm connecting to an external FTP server, and transferring a large amount of files is taking forever. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
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My connection speed for FTP is horrible.
What sort of speed? What does the FTP client report?
I'm connecting to an external FTP server, and transferring a large amount of files is taking forever.
Upload or download?
FTP passive mode?
What do you get if you reserve direction of data transfer? -
My connection speed for FTP is horrible.
What sort of speed? What does the FTP client report?
Sorry, forgot to be specific. The client is reporting approximately 100 KB/s.
I'm connecting to an external FTP server, and transferring a large amount of files is taking forever.
Upload or download?
FTP passive mode?
What do you get if you reserve direction of data transfer?I'm downloading. FTP mode is passive. I'm not quite sure what you mean by the last part, about reserving the direction.
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The client is reporting approximately 100 KB/s.
I wish some of my downloads were as "horribly slow" as yours :-)
I'm not quite sure what you mean by the last part, about reserving the direction.
Sorry, my proofreader wasn't awake this morning. I meant "reversing the direction"
Your 28Mbps download pipe to the internet doesn't mean there is a 28Mbps pipe for your exclusive use between your system and your FTP file server. Your download speeds will depend on congestion between you and the file server, how busy the file server is etc. Without more specific information about these factors it is difficult to judge if your reported download speed indicates a problem you can do something about.
If you are downloading files of at least tens of megabytes and wanting the downloads to complete in the shortest possible time then torrents are likely to be a much more effective mechanism because they download concurrently from multiple sources. But that might not be appropriate for the files you are downloading.
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The client is reporting approximately 100 KB/s.
I wish some of my downloads were as "horribly slow" as yours :-)
Well, my main issue is that sometimes I'll get 20-30 times that.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by the last part, about reserving the direction.
Sorry, my proofreader wasn't awake this morning. I meant "reversing the direction"
Your 28Mbps download pipe to the internet doesn't mean there is a 28Mbps pipe for your exclusive use between your system and your FTP file server. Your download speeds will depend on congestion between you and the file server, how busy the file server is etc. Without more specific information about these factors it is difficult to judge if your reported download speed indicates a problem you can do something about.
If you are downloading files of at least tens of megabytes and wanting the downloads to complete in the shortest possible time then torrents are likely to be a much more effective mechanism because they download concurrently from multiple sources. But that might not be appropriate for the files you are downloading.
When I try uploading instead, I get close to 800 KB/s.
I'm trying to download some very large files, and FTP is the only practical way I can do it at the moment.
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I wish some of my downloads were as "horribly slow" as yours :-)
The "sometimes" suggests to me you might be encountering congestion when you see slow downloads.
I'm trying to download some very large files, and FTP is the only practical way I can do it at the moment.
I have had consistently poor results (Firefox marking incomplete transfers as "finished" with no obvious indication they were incomplete) using Firefox to download multi-media files or more than about 100MB so I resorted to using wget for that sort of download because it can often resume a download from when the connection broke rather than start again. wget can download files using ftp protocol. But I don't know have enough details about your environment to know if this is a helpful remark.
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I wish some of my downloads were as "horribly slow" as yours :-)
The "sometimes" suggests to me you might be encountering congestion when you see slow downloads.
I'm trying to download some very large files, and FTP is the only practical way I can do it at the moment.
I have had consistently poor results (Firefox marking incomplete transfers as "finished" with no obvious indication they were incomplete) using Firefox to download multi-media files or more than about 100MB so I resorted to using wget for that sort of download because it can often resume a download from when the connection broke rather than start again. wget can download files using ftp protocol. But I don't know have enough details about your environment to know if this is a helpful remark.
Ok, thanks for your help. It probably is network congestion.