sftp speed degradation with ZA?

From: Shing-Fat Fred Ma (fma@doe.carleton.ca)
Date: 05/24/02

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    From: Shing-Fat Fred Ma <fma@doe.carleton.ca>
Date: 24 May 2002 00:04:12 GMT

    Hello,

    I'm using sftp on Cygwin_ME-4.90
    to access a solaris 8 machine. I noticed
    that the speed is about 1/10 of cygwin's
    normal ftp. As might be obvious from the
    cygwin version, it is running on WinME.
    I can't seem to query cygwin's sftp for a
    version, but it the ssh version is

         OpenSSH_3.0p1,
         SSH protocols 1.5/2.0,
         OpenSSL 0x0090602f

    The ssh version on the solaris box is

         OpenSSH_2.9p2,
         SSH protocols 1.5/2.0,
         OpenSSL 0x0090602f

    which I hope is indicative of the sftp server
    version, somehow.

    I cannot believe that the encryption cuts
    the bandwidth from about 3.5Mbps during
    *busy* times to 0.44Mps during *nonbusy*
    times (otherwise, security is way too costly).
    It should be the other way around.

    I then noticed that my ZoneAlarm2.6.362
    LEDs indicating download traffic is very busy
    using sftp, but not using ftp. This indicates
    to me that ZA is the reason for the bandwidth
    reduction (I've also experienced the same
    effect when using VNC GUI tool for accessing
    remote hosts).

    Has anyone else had this experience? Is
    there a way to get the security of sftp and
    ZA without the bandwidth degradation?
    Do I even have to worry about ZA if I
    have no shared printers/files and no
    servers running on WinME? The good
    thing about ZA is that it's free, and moving
    to another firewall entailsa a rampup time of
    not only learning to use it, but also to get to
    know its surprise limitations and workarounds.

    Thanks for any comments.

    Fred
    -------------------------------------------
    Fred Ma
    Department of Electronics
    Carleton University, Mackenzie Building
    1125 Colonel By Drive
    Ottawa, Ontario
    Canada K1S 5B6
    fma@doe.carleton.ca
    ===========================================

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