FTP Speed Underperforming

I'm experiencing slow FTP speeds when downloading from my California-based server to an India-based IP address. When downloading from my Windows IIS FTP server I get 200 KB/s or more when in California. However when connecting to the server from India I get speeds around 15 KB/s. It does not appear to be a pure bandwidth issue as the India IP can download from Microsoft with speeds of 500 KB/s and my California server has a 10 megabit upload capacity. When testing through Speakeasy to their Mumbai server the collocation server gets around 2.5 Mb/s down and 3 Mb/s up. Surely enough to get more than 15 KB/s for FTP?

As I mentioned, the collocation server is running the default Windows XP IIS FTP service. It has worked great with my California based clients, however when connecting to India it seems to be slow no matter what kind of bandwidth is present overseas.

Any insight into this frustrating issue would be greatly appreciated.

It's probably nothing you can control, the maximum speed of your network is going to be the maximum speed of the slowest link in the network. Your connection from India sounds like it's being routed through a slow or congested link (probably the latter). Also, you have virtually no control over routing of the connection after it leaves your LAN.


I am certain that a company the size of Microsoft will have local servers in a country the size of India. When downloading from Microsoft you are almost certainly downloading off a local server and not off a server in the US.


It is certainly possible that the route between your data center and Speakeasy's Mumbai data center is a lot faster than the route between your data center and your Indian internet connection.

If you need fast speeds in India my advice would be to set up a local content server there. Overseas connections tend to be slower and less stable than local connections.