Skip to content

Troubleshooting Slow File Transfer Speed

File transfer speed can be affected by number of factors, including the CPU power of your client and server systems, available bandwidth for transfers, and latency in your network. In most cases, you'll see the best performance using the Reflection for Secure IT UNIX Client and Server default settings. In some cases, the following settings may affect transfer speeds.

Check compression settings

You can configure compression on both the client and server using the Compression keyword. You can specify compression values 0-9. The default value for the server is 6. The default value for the client is 0. Increasing the value increases the amount of compression. Using higher values results in the use of less network bandwidth, but at the cost of more CPU cycles.

  • Lowering the Compression value or setting it to zero may improve performance if your files are already compressed, if your network bandwidth is large, or if your computer has limited CPU power.

  • Increasing the Compression value may improve performance if your files are uncompressed, network bandwidth is small, or your CPU is not a limiting factor.

Check smart copy and checkpoint resume settings

Smart Copy and Checkpoint Resume help minimize the amount of time spent repeating unnecessary transfer of data. These features use a series of hashes sent between the client and server to determine if part or all of a file is identical. Identical content is not transferred. This functionality is enabled by default. If you transfer files in a high latency network, the time required to send the hash values across the network can cause delays that exceed the benefit of using these features.

  • If you transfer large files across a high latency network, you may be able to improve performance by disabling the smart copy and checkpoint resume feature. To disable these features from the client, set SmartFileCopy and CheckpointResume to no. To disable these features from the server, set SmartFileTransfer to no.

Check High Performance Network (HPN) settings

Reflection for Secure IT UNIX Client and Server supports HPN features that maximize file transfer performance. This functionality is enabled by default.

  • To ensure best performance, confirm that HPNDisabled is set to 'no' (the default) on both the client and server.

Note

Transfer speed improvements from enabling HPN on client and server are most noticeable in networks with high latency and high bandwidth.