FTP Performance Tips

If you are using FTP to meet the requirements of vendor or counterparty, the steps below will help you get the most out of FTP.

Set the number of simultaneous connections to the maximum supported by your FTP client.

To increase the number of simultaneous connections in FileZilla, go to Edit > Settings > Transfers and increase the Maximum simultaneous transfers setting to 10.

To increase the number of simultaneous connections in Cyberduck, first go to Edit > Preferences > Transfers and set Transfer Files to "Open multiple connections".

Then, go to to Window > Transfers and increase the counter in the lower right to the maximum.

Set the number of simultaneous connections to 10-25 or the maximum supported by your FTP app.

To increase the number of simultaneous connections in FileZilla, go to Edit > Settings > Transfers and increase the Maximum simultaneous transfers setting to 10.

To increase the number of simultaneous connections in Cyberduck, first go to Edit > Preferences > Transfers and set Transfer Files to "Open multiple connections".

Then, go to to Window > Transfers and increase the counter in the lower right to the maximum.

Increasing the number of simultaneous connections will help when uploading multiple files at the same time but will not have any effect when uploading a single file.

Network latency is measured as the round-trip delay between sending data across a network and receiving a reply that the data was received. Higher latency, also known as "lag", can be caused by:

• physical limitations, such as your physical network connection.
• how much data is currently saturating your network connection.
• the network distance between you and your destination.
• network tools and software that regulate or restrict bandwidth usage.

Network latency has a large impact on FTP performance. Whenever possible, use the best physical network available to you and try and achieve the shortest network distance possible.

For example, choose a physical ethernet connection over a Wi-Fi connection.

Ideally, you should be in the same geographic region as the destination that you are connecting to. Using VPNs or network proxies that are located in other geographic regions will always add latency. For example, if you are located in the EU, the FTP destination is also located in the EU, but your VPN is located in the US then all your data will be routed through the US which will cause much higher latency despite the FTP destination being geographically close to you.

Files.com supports accessing files stored in multiple regions or on multiple remote servers from one unified FTP connection. While this is incredibly powerful and enables many unique capabilities, it can also create performance challenges in FTP.

When accessing files in multiple regions or on multiple remote servers from one single connection, we recommend switching to a Files.com CLI, SDK, or Desktop app, which are optimized for multi-region scenarios.

If you are using a custom domain with Files.com, note that custom domains are always hosted only in a single region. If you are not physically located near the region where your custom domain is hosted, FTP performance will generally be awful.

We recommend testing connections to app.files.com rather than your custom domain if you trying to use SFTP from a region other than the region where the domain is hosted. This may increase FTP performance by reducing network latency dramatically. The app.files.com domain is available in many different geographies. This option is only available if your Files.com site does not use a Custom Namespace or require inbound connectivity to be in a certain region.

Performance is even worse when a Files.com site's custom domain is in one region, you are accessing files located in another region, and your FTP client is in a third region. In complicated cross-region cases like this, we really recommend switching to a Files.com CLI, SDK, or Desktop app, which are optimized for multi-region scenarios.