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I am looking for any command which is faster than scp to transfer files, security is not a concern here.

Jeff Schaller
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    see man rsync – JJoao Sep 20 '17 at 09:57
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    The unsecure counterpart is rcp (if not just a link to scp nowadays), but it depends on whether it is faster. Is encryption is the bottleneck (unlikely) or network speed (did you use scp -C)? – Philippos Sep 20 '17 at 10:19
  • if you scp many files, try rsync, if it is a big file, it is not certain rcp will be faster. – Archemar Sep 20 '17 at 10:55
  • @Philippos When ssh first came around, rsh was much faster (on the old Sun SPARCstations that we were using). Likewise for the *cp variants. I haven't really used rcp since the 90's though, so I don't know what the current state of affairs is. I don't even have rsh/rcp on my current system any longer. – Kusalananda Sep 20 '17 at 11:03
  • Interestingly, McKusick writes about rsh as a "temporary" tool that was supposed to be replaced in later versions of BSD. In talks, he has also mentioned rsh as a "mistake" :-) – Kusalananda Sep 20 '17 at 11:11
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    @Kusalananda In those days (I only switched to Sun with an UltraSparc II) the crypto was done in software, so encryption was the bottleneck. Nowadays crypto hardware is becoming standard even in few-dollar ARM chips, that's why I'm pretty sure that network speed is the bottleneck. Network bandwidth grew by a factor of 10 to 100, encryption speed by several 1000. And yes, most networking was based on unsecure "mistakes" in those days, but with not so much evil out there it still worked. – Philippos Sep 20 '17 at 13:48
  • @Philippos Thanks for the added info. Interesting. Yes. network speed (or unnecessary compression) may be the bottleneck for the OP. – Kusalananda Sep 20 '17 at 13:59
  • See https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/227951/what-is-the-fastest-way-to-send-massive-amounts-of-data-between-two-computers – rogerdpack Sep 27 '18 at 22:00

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