Hello! You have reached the NCBI ftp server. NOTE: ALL DATA HERE IS PUBLIC, NON-SENSITIVE, UNRESTRICTED SCIENTIFIC DATA SHARING AMONG SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITIES. THESE SERVERS ARE INTENTIONALLY PUBLIC. NCBI ftp server supports FTP protocol. It does not support SFTP protocol. The FTP client should run in passive FTP mode. After series of experiments with ftp clients tuning for both uploading and downloading with NCBI's ftp server we got to the conclusion that the configuration of ftp client seriously affects the speed you get. We recommend to increase the buffer size to 32MB, it helps for both uploads and downloads. In ncftp command line utility the buffer size can be changed via "set so-bufsize" command. Example, download from st-va colo to be-md: ncftp / > set so-bufsize 0 ncftp / > get -z large /dev/null /dev/null: 1.00 GB 21.27 MB/s ncftp / > set so-bufsize 33554432 ncftp / > get -z large /dev/null /dev/null: 1.00 GB 52.70 MB/s For lukemftp (default ftp client for SUSE linux and some other linux flavors) the change of buffer size is done via commands: sndbuf 33554432 rcvbuf 33554432 Example, uploading from NCBI to ftp.YYYYY.mit.edu: ftp> put 100MB 100MB-1 local: 100MB remote: 100MB-1 229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||60355|) 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for 100MB-1 100% |**********************| 100 MB 1.53 MB/s 00:00 ETA 226 Transfer complete. 104857600 bytes sent in 01:05 (1.52 MB/s) ftp> sndbuf 33554432 Socket buffer sizes: send 33554432, receive 87380. ftp> rcvbuf 33554432 Socket buffer sizes: send 33554432, receive 33554432. ftp> put 100MB 100MB-2 local: 100MB remote: 100MB-2 229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||60469|) 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for 100MB-2 100% |**********************| 100 MB 4.52 MB/s 00:00 ETA 226 Transfer complete. 104857600 bytes sent in 00:23 (4.33 MB/s) Further reading: "Guide to Bulk Data Transfer over a WAN" http://fasterdata.es.net/ We have good experience with lftp on unix: http://lftp.yar.ru/ and FileZilla on Windows: http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/ P.S. There were reports that recent versions of FileZilla have bundled bloatware, be careful! HHS Vulnerability https://www.hhs.gov/vulnerability-disclosure-policy/index.html