Unable to cope with the slow performance of Cyberduck any longer (even though I love everything else about the application), I started looking at other Mac FTP/SFTP clients. Since performance was the key driving factor causing me to seek a new client, I thought it would probably be important to perform some informal performance comparisons between the major candidates—Interarchy, Transmit, and Fetch (and, for reference, Cyberduck as well).
First, the parameters of the test:
- The source system was, of course, a Mac. Specifically, a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.4.8 with all available and applicable updates installed.
- The destination system was a server running ESX Server 3.0.1. It looks like ESX Server 3.0.1 uses OpenSSH 3.6.1p2.
- I transferred an ISO of Windows Server 2003 R2 x64; the file was about 592MB in size. I deleted the file from the destination server after each transfer.
The results of the test were as follows:
Transmit 3.5.5: 39 seconds
Fetch 5.2: 39 seconds
Interarchy 8.2.2: 29 seconds
Cyberduck 2.7.2: 9 minutes 53 seconds
I hadn’t truly realized just how much slower Cyberduck was until I ran this test. The difference is quite dramatic. As you can see, the test results between Transmit, Fetch, and Interarchy were pretty close; Interarchy edged the others out but only by a small margin.
Given that the performance is pretty much the same between the three replacement candidates comes down to aesthetics and features. I love the Kerberos support in Fetch (I’m a Kerberos fan—in case you hadn’t noticed by all the articles I write about leveraging the Kerberos support in Active Directory for cross-platform integration), but really don’t like the interface. Likewise, Transmit is nice, has a Quicksilver plug-in and a Dashboard widget, Keychain support, Spotlight integration, etc., but something about the interface doesn’t seem to fit. I’m not sure what it is. This is not a knock against Transmit or Panic; I paid for and use Unison, Panic’s Usenet/NNTP client.
Interarchy’s interface has its quirks, but I suppose I’m getting used to them now because I don’t notice them as much. I just found and installed the Interarchy Quicksilver plug-in yesterday, which solves one complaint, but I still wish Interarchy would expand its Growl support.
Each of the apps has its advantages and disadvantages, as you can see.
What would be the ideal solution? The ideal solution would be a way to tune Cyberduck’s performance so that it was in the same ballpark as the other applications (not necessarily faster, just in the same general area). I don’t suppose anyone has any performance tuning tips for Cyberduck?
Tags: ActiveDirectory, FTP, Kerberos, Macintosh, Networking, SFTP
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Slow transfer speeds are a know issue with CyberDuck:
http://trac.cyberduck.ch/ticket/185
According to their roadmap they having a milestone of version 2.9 for fixing it (by updating the underlying SSH library):
http://trac.cyberduck.ch/roadmap
No word on how far off this is.
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I would really appreciate it if you sent me an email detailing what you think is quirky about Interarchy’s interface. Also, how would you like to see Interarchy’s Growl support expanded?
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David,
Thanks for the heads-up; I wasn’t aware that the issue had this kind of visibility.
Matthew,
I’ve sent you an e-mail with some suggestions and some feedback. Please don’t be offended; that’s not my intention.
Thanks,
Scott -
I wonder, Scott, and everyone else as well, what you make of Fugu (the client running on OSX)?
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I used Fugu for quite a while, but that was some time ago and I haven’t really tried it again since then. Feature-wise, it just doesn’t seem to be on par with a lot of the newer clients, but I believe that it’s performance is probably comparable to Transmit or Fetch. I’m also not sure it’s still under active development–last time I checked, the application hadn’t been updated in a while.
Scott
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I wasn’t offended Scott and I am sorry if my post inferred that. I just wanted to learn what you thought was quirky about Interarchy. Perhaps there is something I can do about it.
Our goal is to write the very best Mac software and we can’t do that without user feedback. If anyone has any suggestions, feedback or questions about Interarchy please contact us.
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What about command line?
For comparison, what speeds do you get out of the OpenSSH sftp & scp commands? I realize they’re not as convenient for many purposes, but would like to know where they fit into your comparison.
PS-To me, better than 25% faster than Fetch/Transmit seems like a big win for Interarchy!
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Matthew,
I’m glad you weren’t offended. I sometimes forget that others may read my words differently than I intended, and I would have been remiss if I hadn’t made sure that I did not inadvertently offend you or someone else. I appreciate your openness to feedback!
Scott
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Can you be clearer about the ‘parameters of your test’? What kind of network were you transferring files across. Were these two machines on a local area network, or is one a remote server? What kind of physical routers/etc. are in place? I would imagine that the specifics of the network have as much or more to do with transfer rates than the specifics of the computer hardware on the ends.
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Jacob,
Good questions. These transfers were conducted across a Gigabit Ethernet network (specifically, a Cisco Catalyst 3560 Gigabit Ethernet switch). The client was a MacBook Pro connected directly to the Catalyst, as I mentioned earlier; the server was connected to the Catalyst via a Gigabit EtherChannel port group consisting of two Gigabit Ethernet ports bonded together. Both the client and the server were on the same VLAN. All the tests were conducted on the exact same network.
Does that answer your questions?
Scott
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Excellent test. I’ve always felt that Interarchy was a slight bit faster with SFTP. I guess my assumptions were correct :D. I used Interarchy after seeing it recommended by John Gruber. I actually used it for a long period of time, but I just became overly annoyed with using queues with the program. You’re unable to effectively tell where you want your files saved without manually editing the files one by one in the queue. When you have 200+ files saving to one folder on your hard drive and another 150 to another it’s really impossible to sanely go through the files one by one and change the download location. When I brought this up with the developers I got shafted in an e-mail saying that I could easily write an AppleScript to accomplish this. Why should I have to? Immediately after getting that message I downloaded and purchased Transmit. It’s usage of queues really overshadows its download speed decrease in my opinion because I spend more time downloading files than I do editing the local download location. I have other gripes about its interface, but that has nothing to do with downloading or download speeds, so I’ll save it for another discussion.
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Any chance of trying Yummy FTP and adding the results?
I had transmit, went to Interarchy, and I still use Interarchy for most things. For some stuff, though, I like the fact that Yummy can actually gracefully fail on one file and continue going for my scheduled home folder backups. Most is better than none.
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I use Fetch because it works great, they have great support, and they have a dashboard widget too (that I do not use). The other upside is that they have great policy towards students and educators with either free or severly discounted prices, I can’t remember which.
The Fetch interface is definitely lacking compared to Transmit, my #2 pick and previous FTP client. Transmit’s GUI certainly seemed great to me and better than any other FTP client I’ve used lately.
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Did you consider Yummy as a replacement candidate? If so, what were your reasons to not select it in the test.
I realize there are dozens of ftp clients, but this is the one I use
and I am curious about its performance compared to the apps you selected. -
Matt and Turver,
This sounds stupid, I know, but I did not consider Yummy FTP as a replacement simply because I don’t like brushed metal interfaces. I know, it’s a superficial thing, but it is what it is. However, I may run another test and include Yummy FTP in the test results. (Someone else asked for me to include Rbrowser as well as command-line SCP/SFTP.)
Scott
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Only by a small margin? It edged them out by over 25%…that isn’t a small margin.
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I did some speed tests of a Fetch 5.2 beta last month and got similar results (transfering a 1.5GB disk image from a MacBook Pro to an Intel Mac mini, connected by Gigabit ethernet, both running 10.4.8):
Fetch 5.2 SFTP Upload 17.02MB/s
Fetch 5.2 SFTP Download 11.86MB/scommand line SFTP Upload 15.50MB/s
command line SFTP Download 13.40MB/sTransmit 3.5.5 SFTP Upload 15.98MB/s
Transmit 3.5.5 SFTP Download 13.86MB/sAs for the Fetch UI, I gather than you’d like us to add Growl and Quicksilver support. Anything else?
Jim Matthews
Fetch Softworks -
Thanks for the info. Cyberduck is definitely slooooooooooow. Try another test. Upload an un-zipped multi megabyte server side application like Gallery 2 or Joomla. Add Yummy FTP to your mix. See what happens.
I find that most of the time I spend waiting for ftp to finish is when transferring multiple files and directories. I tried all of the ftp clients you mentioned and a couple more. Yummy consistently beat the crowd, though I haven’t done this for a bit over a year so the others may have caught up.
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All,
Whoa! I didn’t expect such a robust response to this article. Did I get dugg or something?
Anyway…for those interested in command-line performance (using the same client, server, and network setup):
SFTP: 37 seconds
SCP: 28 secondsI haven’t tested any other clients. If I get a chance to test more clients, I’ll be happy to post my findings here in another article. Please remember that I’m really only concerned with SFTP performance (I very rarely use ordinary FTP).
Jim (of Fetch Softworks),
Thanks for the feedback. Fetch’s performance was right in there with the other applications (I may be a second or so off in my timings–I’m not perfect). As for UI concerns, the application just seems dated. Keep in mind this is just my personal opinion–I’d love to see a unified toolbar, more use of panes, drop the pinstriping look still in certain parts of the window, and Growl support (both foreground and background). And yes, a Quicksilver plug-in that allowed me to select files to upload, etc., would be very helpful. I don’t use Dashboard, but I understand you already have a Widget for those who do use Dashboard. I can only speak to how I work, and what fits my workflow. There has been a lot of positive support for Fetch; clearly, it’s a good program that people enjoy using.
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I decided to do some more speed tests too, as I’ve noticed slow speeds. My connection is from my Macbook Pro on my University’s campus network in the UK (10MB/s upload and download, max), to my webserver in CA, USA. The file was a 14.5MB binary file (mp3), and here are the results:
cyberduck 5 mins 38 seconds
fugu 46 seconds
transmit 55 seconds
Quite a huge difference.
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Yummy FTP’s features apparently include being able to choose Aqua or Metal appearance*. Count me among the interested persons in adding Yummy FTP to your quick test.
*http://www.yummysoftware.com/features/fully-customizable
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I’m not sure if it’s just a coincidence, but Cyberduck seemed faster on my system after I started using OpenDNS (opendns.com). Anyway, I’ve had good luck with OpenDNS and Cyberduck is now tolerable for me.
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It is just coincidence, OpenDNS is pure hype. Your ISP’s DNS or a local one will always be faster, and it’s mostly irrelavent anyway. DNS lookups can only affect the speed by a few seconds at the start of the connection.
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Yummy does allow you to turn brushed metal off, but I always forget which apps are brushed metal because Uno takes care of that for me. I don’t have to see it ever. I always get a shock when I reinstall the OS and the Finder pops up as brushed metal.
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I’d also love to see my Yummy FTP included in your test results
However, I would point out that the test is probably a little unrealistic – I mean, how often do you transfer just one file? I’ll bet that the majority of people will normally transfer many smaller files at once, when updating a web site, for example. So I’d like to see test results for this scenario too.
Also, just to clear up the confusion, Yummy FTP has defaulted to the far more elegant Aqua and unified toolbar look since version 1.5. You’ll only get the old metal look if you’d previously used Yummy FTP and updated to the latest version, since it will retain your preference setting for this appearance option.
-Jason Downing
Yummy Software -
Jason,
The test may be unrealistic for many people–my point here was not to create a test that was realistic for everyone else but to create a test that allowed me to determine which product was right for my needs. If my findings prove useful to others, fine; if not, I encourage them to do the same thing themselves–use the products and determine which product is right for their needs.
Having said all that, I’ll try to run another set of tests that include Yummy FTP and see how it compares against the others.
(BTW, I’m glad to hear you ditched the metal look by default. Brushed metal…Ugh!)
Scott
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Thanks, Scott. I appreciate it! I do accept your point that the test was devised or your own particular needs – that’s fair enough, then
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What about a more “real world” test? I just downloaded a 7MB website (327 files) with both interarchy and transmit from a remote server over an 8MB ADSL connection (server ping of 266ms, which is pretty slow).
The results? Transmit: 3 min, 33 sec, Interachy: 11 min, 9 sec.
Transmit downloads 4 files at once, which goes a long way towards eliminating ftp’s horrible overhead.
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Abhi,
As I have stated several times already, my purpose here was to determine which client works best for me. I did do a real-world test. It’s not my fault that my real-world test, designed to help me pick the best client for my needs, is not a real-world test that works well for you. I would encourage you to do exactly what I did–test the clients and find out which client works best for you in your particular situation. What works best for me may not work best for you.
Scott
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Along with Abhi, I will complain about Interarchy spiking CPU and freezing a DP 2.5 GHz machine while listing a new directory (10.4.8) – top shows Interarchy and core services sharing the CPU. Unacceptable behaviour. Transmit doesn’t seem to do that, although I hate the dual pane interface.
Not happy as I have 5 seat business licens for Interarchy and years invested in learning its quirks.
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Alec,
Have you spoken with Matthew Drayton about this? He has been extremely responsive in the instances in which I’ve communicated with him. I also tried to recreate this behavior myself, including listing a directory with more than 7500 entries via SFTP. I saw absolutely no strange CPU utilization–in fact, the CPU hardly even budged. I would really recommend you get in touch with Matthew and see if he can help you get this straightened out.
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Give ForkLift a try if you need speed: http://www.binarynights.com
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Mio,
Thanks for the recommendation; ForkLift looks nice, but I’m not a big fan of dual-paned arrangements. I’m pretty happy with Interarchy now.
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I have tried Cyberduck today for the first time because I am a Textmate user and need some ftp client that works with it.
It is so slow that I cannot use it, I did a search on cyberduck + speed and found this blog. So It looks like a well known issue.
I guess Transmit is my only option for Textmate. I have been an rBrowser user up to now and no complaints there – just need the Textmate support.
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Michael,
Try checking the box for using SCP; this really seems to improve performance for Cyberduck. I’m not sure in what version that was added; I know it’s there in version 2.8.4 (the latest version). With that box checked, performance was much more respectable.
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