local vs hosted lag

[Jesse Wright]

I am wondering if anybody has noticed this, so I can narrow it down to my servers.

For example, if I use the included FTPeek Sample Client to connect to my server:

When I use the Sample Client locally, it connects to my FTP and lists the files in about 3 seconds.

If I upload the Sample Client to my FM server and try to connect to the same FTP server, it takes almost 2 minutes to connect, and another 10 seconds to list the remote files.

When disconnecting, it shows me that it is deleting the records that made up the directory listings which takes another 15 seconds. Where I saw none of this scripting running when the Sample file was run on the FM client as a local file.

Can anybody guess what may be causing this?

I'm running on a quad core 2.21GHz server with 4 GB of RAM.

Many thanks!

[Smef]

It sounds like the connection between your local computer and your server may be slow. Is your server offsite? The plugin functions are all executed from your local machine and not the server, so the slow part is likely the creation and deletion of records from the database on the server.

[Jesse Wright]

OK, that makes sense, I was drawing some conclusions towards that effect as I sit here watching the sample file build the table records for the local files (176 of them) and then build the records to display the 16 remote folders.

Just over 2 records per second accounts for the approximate 2 minute "lag".

It is an off-site server, and we have not ever noticed this kind of latency. Speed tests show that we stay around 4 Mb/s down and over 1 Mb/s up. But this is the first time I have had a hosted file calling plug-in functions.

I was planning on developing a hosted FTP solution. Would it run better through IWP? I'm assuming it would be executing functions from the server plug-in?

Thanks for your time

[Jesse Wright]

Actually, I got it. Rather than speculate I'll just build my solution and see how it goes.

I'm not going to build lists to show local or remote files. I just want the user to be able to dump a file in a container, so I can have it create the directory, upload, and give them back a URL they can forward to their client. Should be simple enough. And without the need to build those records, it should be peppy enough for them to stay productive.

Thanks again for you time and FTPeek!

Regards,

Jesse

[Smef]

Plugins are executed on your local FileMaker Pro, so the performance there isn't going to change based on the location of the FileMaker server. Other script steps which are happening in your script which is calling the plugin functions may take time to execute, however, as that is a time when data is being transferred between you and the server.

Plugin functions are executed on the server when accessing a database through IWP, but there is significantly limited functionality in IWP which may make many of FTPeek's features more difficult for you to work with. For example, you can't script an upload or download to/from your machine in IWP because of browser security features. Users would not be able to upload files to your database at all (You can't upload any files in IWP, a limitation of the IWP feature) and any downloads would need to be one-at-a-time by having your users right-click on container fields and saving the file to their computer, rather than scripting downloads to their machines.

[Jesse Wright]

Got it! Thanks for clarifying.

Take care,

Jesse