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Why are cheaper servers slow in FTP

Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2009 10:58 am
by matthijs
That cheaper hosting plans are slower is something I understand. More users on one machine, less processing power per user. However, what I notice is that it's mainly the FTP that is very slow on lower budget hosts. Loading of webpages is reasonable.

But uploading a few files takes ages.

Why is that?

(I'm talking about Media Temple grid service by the way)

Re: Why are cheaper servers slow in FTP

Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2009 12:17 pm
by alex.barylski
I believe it is because FTP uses two concurrent connections, port 21 for listening for connections, and port 20 for data transmission.

My ISP for instance, I swear to hell, trottles FTP transfers, as I can never stay connected for more than 30 seconds, so uploading files to my shared hosts always requires several attempts.

I asked my host to enable SSH and BAM!!! Problem solved, everything uploaded in one fell swoop.

Re: Why are cheaper servers slow in FTP

Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2009 12:43 pm
by Eric!
I've had the same problem with ISP filtering. I'm always using a variety of isp's and I've found a lot of them use packet filters. In fact some counties (with communication monopolies) will block packets completely, like voip.

Sometimes I'll use a vpn tunnel into the US and it runs 3x faster or it goes from not working to working!

Re: Why are cheaper servers slow in FTP

Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2009 1:26 pm
by alex.barylski
The CRTC is holding a hearing in regards to packet filtering, here in Canada. Because there are only a small few large ISP's they have got away with it, until now, hopefully.

I hate that about Canada, whereas in the states, there are countless ISP's, phone companies, insurance, etc, in Canada the markets are dominated by a few large corps. who play the monopoly card as much as possible. I can't say I blame them, but I still hate it :)

Re: Why are cheaper servers slow in FTP

Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2009 4:40 pm
by matthijs
Interesting. But I cannot imagine it has anything to do with my ISP. All my sites on other webservers are very fast with FTP. It's only the American companies like Mediatemple or Dreamhost which are incredibly slow

Re: Why are cheaper servers slow in FTP

Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2009 6:46 pm
by JAB Creations
Comcast throttles all network traffic. In example torrents simply won't upload past 120KB sustained. On what is allowed to reach maximum upload speed (about 2,500 megabit or 320 kilobytes a second in my area) if I upload say a large video to my site it will allow the first ten megabytes to be transferred at full speed and then it drops it down to 120KB. My current web host sucks for uploading lots of tiny little files and the server often times out if I try to upload more then a couple dozen without refreshing the server directory. Companies don't exist to please customers, they exist to make money; thus their highest concern is maximizing the perception of quality while minimizing the costs to provide it. The beautiful thing in the end though is it doesn't really cost all that much to provide a superior service if you know the marketing gimmicks of your competitors. :twisted:

Re: Why are cheaper servers slow in FTP

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 12:50 am
by matthijs
So webhosts are technically able to limit the speed of FTP, while the speed of serving webpages is not limited?

Re: Why are cheaper servers slow in FTP

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 3:52 am
by Benjamin
You can prioritize traffic based on the port at the router level and cpu usage per application in unix.