I'm having trouble with file transfer speeds while using SSHFS to access a remote HPC cluster from different locations. When I'm at my office, the file access is fast and only limited by my office's internet speed. However, at home or other places, the speeds drop significantly to about 5 MBPS, regardless of my internet speed being much faster. My IT support suggested that the slow access is due to multiple TCP connections being tunneled through each other, but I feel like there should be ways to improve this. I can connect via a VPN or use tunneling, but both methods seem equally slow. Any ideas or solutions to speed this up? I've thought about using alternative mounting methods, but SSHFS is my only option for accessing the remote files. Thanks for your help!
5 Answers
It sounds like your home upload speeds could be bottlenecking your experience. Even if your download speed is high, typical home connections often have much slower upload speeds, which can really affect file transfers. If possible, consider using SFTP or SCP; they might provide better speeds for your situation.
SSHFS has its limitations when it comes to speed, mainly due to the overhead it carries. You might want to test the network performance using tools like iperf3 to measure throughput and latency. This could give you more insight into whether the slowdown is specific to SSHFS or related to your overall internet performance when connecting remotely.
If you have access to a local machine within your organization's network, you could use that to SSH into the cluster. This way, you can bypass the slow internet connection at home.
Have you tried alternatives like Samba, NFS, or WebDAV? They might offer better performance compared to SSHFS. Also, don't forget to check the dmesg log for any errors that could be impacting performance.
It seems like you're looking for answers that might contradict your IT team's findings. From your description, your home connection may be cable-based, which limits upload speeds significantly. You might experience a speed boost with SFTP or SCP, but the difference may not be huge.
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