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I used pscp to transfer that amount of data from Windows 10 to Linux with a TP-LINK 3G/4G MR-3420 router. Windows machine is connected with Cat5 cable and the Linux machine is with WiFi.

Is there any better tool for faster transfer?

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    About 48 Mbps, which might be OK-ish given this thing only has 100Mbps LAN ports, and the overhead of SSH and encryption. – muru Aug 05 '19 at 10:41
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    Depends on the used IEEE Standard. If 802.11n is used I would say it is a bit slow, but if 802.11g is used, this is almost full speed (max would be 54Mbps). Depends on your wifi card and drivers + settings. – pLumo Aug 05 '19 at 10:44
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    @pLumo, there's a mode under wireless status section and it is 11bgn mixed. –  Aug 05 '19 at 10:55
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    Not knowing what the network hw is capable of, how the wifi protocols work, and what better tools to use in Windows (if any) is not a Unix problem as defined in our FAQ. There are better ways, either connecting the Linux via cable or using an external hard disk. – Rui F Ribeiro Aug 05 '19 at 14:35
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    @plumo Unfortunately, not only the protocol of the equipments involved, but also the negotiated speed depending on quality of chipsets, distance, obstacles and noise/interference. – Rui F Ribeiro Aug 05 '19 at 14:40
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    related https://superuser.com/questions/1311149/why-do-wifi-routers-do-such-a-bad-job-of-channel-selection/1312062#1312062 and https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/252210/wi-fi-problems-using-asus-usb-n13-adapter-realtek/252215#252215 – Rui F Ribeiro Aug 05 '19 at 14:45
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    @Emon Haque, if there's a device, any device, active on that Wireless LAN using 802.11g, then all devices on that channel are slowed down. Also, Rui F Ribero's remark above is spot on. – K7AAY Aug 05 '19 at 16:28
  • Yes: A new router. See why in my answer. – K7AAY Aug 05 '19 at 20:52

2 Answers2

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Before relying on WiFi for any large file transfer, I would try to connect by Fast Ethernet.

If Fast Ethernet was absolutely, positively, not available (which, from your router, looks like), then I would make very sure I was on a 5GHz channel, that bonding of multiple channels was enabled, and that no 802.11a device was on that channel. (802.11b and 802.11g, notorious anchors for WiFi speed, will not work on the 5GHz band.)

Sadly, though, your router is incapable of 5GHz, as well as incapable of Gigabit Ethernet. I would suggest, if this is a regular occurrence, an upgrade to a router which will do 5GHz, 802.11ac and Gigabit Ethernet.

K7AAY
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    802.11a also detiorates easily into no more than 54Mbps, unfortunately. The ideal is having 802.11ac when near to the router – Rui F Ribeiro Aug 05 '19 at 20:15
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    Yeppers, which is why I suggested "no 802.11a device was on that channel." – K7AAY Aug 05 '19 at 20:27
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    It's only 2.4GHz, there were some other android, galaxy on network during transfer. Best option is to have a new 5GHz for such operations. –  Aug 06 '19 at 05:32
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For the fastest transfer, I find that tar'ing the folders/files into one thing is best. When there are thousands of sub folders and files then the OS's become the choke point processing each during the transfer, especially with Windows. So tar or zip your stuff first, do a single file transfer, then tar -xf or unzip on the destination computer. And don't bother doing any compression, the resulting smaller file size usually won't save you more time in the transfer than the time it takes doing the compressing and the uncompressing.

https://www.tp-link.com/lk/home-networking/3g-4g-router/tl-mr3420/

one 10/100Mbps WAN Port, 4 10/100Mbps LAN Ports, support the auto-Negotiation and auto-MDI/MDIX

Local wireless HD video sharing, with speeds up to 300Mbps

per the specs it looks like your wired LAN ports are only 100 Mbps and not even 1gbps; that would definitely limit transfer speed. It seems this particular switch is meant more for wifi connecting/streaming?

your question of is there a better tool: the best answer might be (a) a faster switch or (b) connect both systems via wifi to make use of that up to 300Mbps which is better than the wired ports at 100Mbps.

first thing is check the negotiated network link speed on each system to know what you are working with

without getting technical into the whole GiB vs GB thing, 1gbps = 125 MB/sec max, I typically get around 100MB/sec transfer on a clean wired LAN with all hardware 1gpbs. At 100Mbps that would limit you to 12.5 MB/s max, 80% of which is ~10MB/sec. At 10 MB/sec expect 150GB to take at least 4.1 hours.

150 * 1000 / 10 = 15000 seconds; /60/60 = hours

on a good 1gbps connection at sustained 100 MB/sec rate would take ~25 minutes

Community
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ron
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  • For most of the MP4s, transfer rates were almost always 10/12 MBps, for AVIs and others, it dropped considerably, in some cases it was only around 300KBps! It'd many directories and subdirectories and the payload created identical directory structures in destination folder automatically. –  Aug 06 '19 at 05:13
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    test_.iso 19% 1424MB 92.6MB/s 01:02 ETA for 7.2gb file using scp took 1:17; from that serving linux system using samba to copy to my win10 pc I get a sustained 101MB/sec rate, all over wired 1gbps; if you are using wifi then interference can easily reduce the performance unbeknownst to you unless you specifically check for that (easier said than done). – ron Aug 06 '19 at 14:35