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A minute ago I wanted to download a Wordpress installation on one of my servers. This is an existing installation that I wanted to remove and download for backup. I fired up Cyberduck, my FTP-client, and dragged the folder into the Finder on my Mac. Then it took a really long time for Cyberduck to create an index of all files and folders before the actual download begins. To me this seems like a waste of time. Why doesn't the download start right away, when the first folder is indexed?

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    Progress reporting is very inaccurate without knowing the full list of files to transfer. That is one possible rationale.
    – Daniel B
    May 30, 2014 at 10:56
  • Well, sometimes I think that this results in double the download time, and many times I don't care about a progress report. This is similar to Windows Explorer, copying a folder with thousands of files, which can take many minutes before it even starts.
    – SPRBRN
    May 30, 2014 at 11:19
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    It depends, of course. If you have many small files, the overhead will be very high. On the other hand, if you have very large files, it'll hardly matter at all.
    – Daniel B
    May 30, 2014 at 12:50
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    This isn't a limitation of FTP so much as a limitation of the FTP client you are using. Filezilla, for example, doesn't wait. Jun 12, 2014 at 16:35

1 Answer 1

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The general reasons for this could be two fold:

1)its to provide an ETA for completion. Some FTP clients will enumerate everything before copying (like windows explorer does for lcoal copying). This gives a starting file count and data size total - allowing creation of a guestimated ETA.

2)some poorer written FTP programs out there make a separate conenction to enumerate files while another connection does the download. This uses one of the connections to the FTP box (which if you are only allowed 1 will leave you stumped)

3)there are a lot of overheads with jumping form a folder to enumerae, to a folder for download, then back and forth.. it can actually be faster to complete one job then another - again this is dependant on the coding and efficiency of the client.

Hope this helps.

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