FTP downloads only use 33% of my internet speed

Question

So my internet speed is 250/250 but isn't firm. I run speed tests every hour on my DNS server and this is the usual result:

Whenever I download files through SFTP or FTP I get capped in speed. This is me downloading on a wired connection against ftp://speedtest.tele2.net:

The speed test image ran against that server as well. I was suggested to try against it here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7968703/is-there-a-public-ftp-server-to-test-upload-and-download

The most I've been able to achieve downloading through FTP/SFTP is 100mbit. Even if I download 2 files or 10 files at once. it caps at 100mbit. However, if I use two programs at the same time on the same computer (for example FileZilla and WinSCP) it bumps up to around 17-20MB/s. So obviously the computer isn't the bottleneck. Downloading through HTTP or on steam can easily reach over 30MB/s.

I'm using the basic installation of both FileZilla and WinSCP but bumped up the simultaneous downloads to 10 (doesn't matter what I have). I've tried on three computers. One wireless windows, one wired windows and one wireless mac and they all have the same issue. What can I do to utilize the full speed of my internet when I download through SFTP/FTP? Thanks for all the help

Answer 1

100Mbit? Sounds like a port that is not Gigabit might be capping the speed.

• Does the system you're testing on have a Gigabit Ethernet port?
• Is your router/switch Gigabit capable?
• Check power management options for the port, notably some if not most Intel ethernet hardware supports downgrading the speed to save power. You might see this if testing on battery power on a laptop.