System administrators who work with both Unix servers and Windows machines sooner or later run into the need to copy files between these different OS families. Typically, people connect from Windows machines themselves and want to upload, or conversely, download something from Unix servers or clients.
The popular WinSCP is usually the tool of choice for this.
However, once they start using this utility, administrators notice (and this happens almost universally) that copying is too slow, barely managing 20% to 40% of the available network bandwidth.
The WinSCP FAQ and bug tracker respond by saying either the network is dumb or the CPU is underpowered. But then why do standard tools, such as the SCP utility built into Unix, work just fine and copy at maximum speed, while WinSCP, even on modern powerful 4-core computers, doesn't give more than 4MB/s on a 100Mbit/s link?
The answer clearly lies somewhere inside WinSCP's architecture, since after trying all sorts of different settings the only thing I managed to achieve was a drop in speed, not an increase.
Solution.
Fortunately, the WinSCP authors are preparing to release version 5 of this utility (you most likely have 4.xx). The beta (or maybe, by the time you're reading this note, it's no longer a beta) is available for download from the official site.
Version 5 of WinSCP shows much better copy-speed results than version 4 did. Slowdowns when copying through WinSCP are no longer noticeable, at least for a 100Mbit/s network (haven't tested on gigabit yet).
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