Hi,
I'm looking for input on the best practices for sending large files
There are both commercial products (fastcopy) and various "free"(*) products (bbcp, bbftp, gridftp) that will send large files. While they can take advantage of larger windows they also have the capability of using multiple streams (dealing with the inability to tune the tcp stack). There are, of course, competitors to these products which you should look into. As always, YMWV. Some references: http://www.softlink.com/fastcopy_techie.html (Some parts of NASA seem to like fastcopy) http://nccs.gov/user-support/general-support/data-transfer/bbcp/ (Full disclosure, bbcp was written by someone who sits about 3 meters from where I am sitting, but I cannot find a nice web reference from him about the product, so I am showing a different sites documentation) http://doc.in2p3.fr/bbftp/ (One of the first to use multistream for BaBar) http://www.globus.org/grid_software/data/gridftp.php (Part of the globus toolkit. Somewhat heavier weight if all you want is file transfer.) http://fasterdata.es.net/tools.html (A reference I am surprised Kevin did not point to :-) http://www.slac.stanford.edu/grp/scs/net/talk/ggf5_jul2002/NMWG_GGF5.pdf (A few year old performance evaluation) www.triumf.ca/canarie/amsterdam-test/References/010402-ftp.ppt (Another older performance evaluation) Gary (*) Some are GPL, and some (modified) BSD licenses. Which one is "free enough" depends on some strongly held beliefs of the validator.