File transfer: Windows WinSCP orders-of-magnitude faster than Linux scp/rsync

Question

My goal is to transfer a large file from a remote HPC to my local machine.

My experience is in Windows, but I recently got a workstation with Fedora. On my Windows machine, I use WinSCP. Downloading the file this way (drag-n-drop, I have done nothing to the WinSCP settings) I get download speeds >15 MB/s.

On my new Fedora machine, I have tried scp and rsync from the terminal,

scp user@remote.hpc:/grab/path/object.tif /target/path/

rsync -avz --progress user@remote.hpc:/grab/path/object.tif /target/path/

and also adding the cluster to my file tree and drag-n-dropping this way. On the same network as before, I am throttled at <50 kB/s, which is totally infeasible.

I assume WinSCP is automatically doing something smart, and an experienced Linux user would manually enable such behavior. But I am not an experienced Linux user.

Any ideas on what's happening here?

OpenSSH version is OpenSSH_9.3pl and WinSCP is using SFTP.

Answer 1

If WinSCP works better on your network, then try using WinSCP on Fedora in wine. In the wine compatibility database, WinSCP v.5.x has a "silver" rating, and v. 6 and later are "gold", so it should work well, with the usual Windows GUI, in Fedora Linux.

If not already installed, it is simple to add wine to Fedora. The Ubuntu (Debian) directions for installing WinSCP might be applicable to Fedora, at least as a starting point.

Notes

• The file dialogs' directory structure likely will show a C: drive that is actually inside the wine/WinSCP/ folder, but the Z: drive should be Fedora's root folder.

• The first time wine runs a Windows application, it may take a minute or two for it to search for configuration data, but subsequent use should be as fast as for a native Linux app.

Answer 2

Since 9.0, OpenSSH scp is actually an SFTP client.
See Using sftp like scp.

• For speeding up OpenSSH SFTP see, Speed up SFTP uploads on high latency network?

  Though with scp, the sftp -R x maps to -X nrequests=x, and the -B x maps to -X buffer=x.

• Or, as SCP can be faster than SFTP, you can try forcing scp to use SCP with -O switch.