A file transfer is the transmission of a computer file from one network to another. This process is facilitated by the use of file transfer protocols. Various file transfer solutions exist for different contexts, from traditional desktop and server applications to the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analytics.
File transfer can occur over many different networks and media, including the Internet, a local area network, an intranet, or even USB cables. FTP is the most common protocol for transferring files over the Internet, although other protocols such as SFTP and Secure-FTP exist for higher security needs.
FTP works on top of TCP, like HTTP, and uses 2 TCP connections in parallel: a control connection and a data connection. The data connection may follow either the P or PAGE structure. The PAGE structure divides the file into pages that contain both data and metadata; each page has a header giving information about the page’s attributes. The P or PAGE structure was developed for TENEX systems and is not widely supported.
The data transfer speed is constrained by the disk access speed of the destination server. This is especially important for large data sets of small files, where the transfer rate will be proportional to the number of files accessed by the destination server.
To estimate the time required to transfer a file, you can use an online tool that calculates the transfer time over a specified interface or network link. You can enter the file size, available bandwidth or transfer rate, and select units. For example, the unit for bit per second is bps, and the units for bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes are b, m, g, and t respectively. upload big files