Multiple threads

A useful feature for the program would be to have multiple-download threads, like LeechFTP and other FTP based programs. Very helpful for speed limited, but not bandwidth limited connections.

@nobody: I'm currently not able to do this (some technical reason).

Ni Martin,

What technical reason?

Ideal situation would be if I could use Windows Powershell to run winscp and tell it to start lets say: 6 threads and give it a list of folders and files I want copied and wait till they were all transferred. Each thread would always be transferring a file such that multiple threads help copy a given directory. Like FileZilla or SmartFTP does. Is this planned hopefully? This would make winscp much better imo.

Thanks, Dave

Hi Martin,

This is an old post so I'm hoping the "technical reasons" were an old limitation. I see that WinSCP basically supports multiple background threads but since it does not allow multiple threads to work on a single folder copying the files from the folder in parallel. This indeed makes WinSCP MUCH slower than it need be as compared to FileZilla and SmartFTP for instance. It is nice that WinSCP has good scripting facilities since those are totally missing in FileZilla. If you could get the concurrent background threads to always be copying a file from a recursive list of the files and folders selected that would make WinSCP perfect :D

@codeslinger: If WinSCP is too slow for you, use it only for the scripting. For simple moving of files, I use FireFTP (Firefox plugin), because I like the interface going directly through my browser (and it's multi-threaded). But it can't handle scripting like WinSCP.

Slow is an understatement. Compared to FileZilla it was a 100 times slower after a couple comparison runs. This seems a nice package with this one glaring flaw...

Please add me to the list of those who'd like to see the ability to automatically upload and download multiple download threads, and uploads as well.

I often have occasion to upload or download several hundred files to or from one folder on a server. If I manually select a few files at a time and start the transfer for each of those groups so I have, say, 16 sessions running at once, I max out my upstream or downstream bandwidth. The process is then completed much faster than if I select all 300 files, start the transfer, and let them transfer one at a time.

I'd like an option to set the maximum number of transfers that will start at the same time automatically.

@jefe: Are you aware of option Enqueue each file individually?

Edit 2022: Replaced with Use multiple connections for single transfer.

Actually, Martin, I was aware of that setting but misunderstood its meaning. I had it's function backward in my mind. I thought checking that box would cause a single file at a time to be queued, rather than the other way around.

Now that I've checked that box in Preferences file transfers are working exactly how I was hoping they would!

Thanks for your reply and a very good application.

--jefe

Bump.

Average download bandwidth today in the US is closer to 200Mbps and "quickly" approaching 1Gbps thanks to covid and work from home.

Many of you users I'm sure are on 300, 500, and 1Gbps or even faster plans today. I'm on 1Gbps/1Gbps fiber myself.

Without this feature I can't get past around 75mbps for a single download. Even though I know the server can handle closer to 2.5Gbps.

What we really are asking for is segmented supported. That is use many (user configured) connections to download the same file. Spit it up and recombine when done. As long as server supports.

@war59312: Thanks for your post.

This request is being tracked already:
Issue 513 – Transfer single file using multiple connections
You can vote for it there.

TY, voted :)

See this as "IMPLEMENTED" in up and-coming 6.2.

Awesome, TY. I can't wait to test it out.

@war59312: Note that so far it's implemented for SFTP downloads only. If that's your use case, I can send you a development build for testing.

Indeed. SFTP.

Happy to test, TY.

@war59312: Sent.

@martin: I use SFTP to transfer large files with WinSCP and stumbled across this thread while looking for ways to improve my transfer speed. I'm excited to hear this feature is being implemented! Would you be willing to send me the development build for testing as well?

@tsumeone: Sent.

Sorry for reviving this thread yet again, but I'm wondering if this option also applies to synchronization commands?

I'm looking into WinSCP for backing up my data (my current provider doesn't allow SMB access anymore, so my only practical option is FTP). There are many folders with many tiny files, so transferring it all in one thread would be very slow.

Do I need to set an option when synchronizing to make sure threading is used?

@Wildcard: Synchronization using multiple connection is not supported.
But there's a script for this:
Automating transfers or synchronization in parallel connections over SFTP/FTP protocol

Thank you very much!