Poor performance with rsync on Windows

Question

I've just set up file synchronization between a Windows 2000 Server and a Windows 2003 Server using cwrsync, a windows compile of rsync. It was easy to setup and seems to work well but I am seeing a problem with speed, the client does not seem to be able to top 130 Kb/s despite the network being capable of delivering 1 Mb/s over FTP. Anyone else experienced this and found a solution?

I currently use a workaround where I run three rsync processes in parallell to the same server. All three processes hit about 130 Kb/s.

Answer 1

I use rsync on loads of sites, but only with ADSL 440Kbps and 800Kbps upload speeds. However on those lines I've found it manages to use about 80% of the bandwidth. I assume the rest is down to latency and the protocol overhead.

For what it's worth, while CWRsync is a simple installation it's actually very easy to roll your own rsync transfers, and you get the very latest Cygwin build of rsync. See http://www.ratsauce.co.uk/notablog/UsingRsync.asp for my version of a walkthrough.

JR

Answer 2

I had a speed issue with Unison (another file sync program) on Windows when I was using freeSSHd. A switch to CopSSH solved the issue.

Conveniently, CopSSH is built by the same people as cwRsync, so it is easy to match Cygwin versions between them and copy over rsync.exe from the cwRsync installation directory to /usr/bin in CopSSH — works like charm.