New FTP PPC client speed benchmarks & WM5 compliance & HTC Wizard EDGE throughput speed report

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is here to stay. You will need to use FTP clients a lot of times – for example, if you try to access the XDA-Developers Web site to download files from, just to name an example.

As with downloading from the Web utilizing the HTTP protocol (see this benchmarking article for a report), FTP clients also have sometimes radically different efficiency. This is why it's essential to know what they are capable of, bandwidth utilization-wise.

Some 1.5 yeas ago, I've thoroughly tested the speed and thoroughput rate of all the FTP clients (see this and this thread; and, for a slightly newer comparison, the Pocket Phojo section in my image viewer/editor roundup).

After publishing these benchmarks, all the reviewed applications have been enhanced, making it necessary to make a brand new benchmarking article.

All, except for CedeFTP. The developer of the latter, Noisette Software, has quit the business and hasn't released a new version of CedeFTP after publising my previous reviews. Therefore, I don't benchmark CedeFTP in this review. Look up the results in the earlier review if you own CedeFTP and don't want to switch to anything else.

Therefore, the tested applications:

vxFtp 1.2.1
Resco Explorer 2005 5.35 (Resco for short)
Total Commander 2.0 (TC for short)

The comparison charts

The charts all contain time in seconds, in the form of download/upload value pairs. That is, FTP server-to-PDA values come first and, then, PDA-to-FTP server benchmark results follow.

High-speed connection throughput was measured with a 1.46Mbyte file, in passive mode; low-speed connection throughput was benchmarked with a 135 kbyte one. I used a WM5 HTC Wizard in the test because

1. using a WM5 device, I also got a clear picture about the hidden WM5-related bugs in each application (fortunately, all of them are 100% compatible with the new OS)
2. the HTC Wizard has built-in EDGE support, while my standalone GSM phone, the Sony-Ericsson t610, doesn't support it (it only has 4:1 GPRS).
3. this way, I could also test the practical EDGE throughput of two local GSM operators (as can be seen, Vodafone is definitely slower than Pannon GSM in downstream speed; in upstream speed, it's a bit faster)

Note that these results also show what relative speeds you could expect on other devices. This is why I've "only" benchmarked the FTP clients on one Pocket PC.

Transfer over high-speed connections

Client:vxFtp 1.2.1Resco 5.35TC 2.0
Main Memory9:0/20.821.2/8.98.4/9.5
Card14.7/22.871.0/10.317.0/9.1

Transfer over EDGE connections

Vodafone EDGE:

Client:vxFtp 1.2.1Resco 5.35TC 2.0
Main mem15.0/15.512.3/22.014.0/19.2
Card13.4/15.513.3/21.814.7/20.8

Pannon GSM EDGE, using active connections because this particular GSM operator doesn't put clients behind a proxy and, therefore, clients get a real IP address connectable from the outside world. To see the difference between the two modes, I've also made a passive test. (As can be seen, the additional PASV command handshake in passive mode doesn't add much additional overhead to the communication):

Client:vxFtp 1.2.1Resco 5.35
Main memory 11.4/16.6 (passive mode: 12.0/16.8)9.6/31.0

The results in an easier-to-grasp scenario chart

The recommended FTP client for each scenario is:

Scenario:Upload from cardDownload to cardUpload from main memoryDownload to main memory
Low-speed connectionvxFtp; TC about 35% and Resco about 42% slowerAll of them fared equally wellvxFtp; TC about 25% and Resco about 45% slowerAll of them fared equally well
High-speed connectionTC and Resco; vxFtp about 2 times slowervxFtp and TC; Resco should be avoided – about 5 times slower!TC and Resco; vxFtp about 2 times slowervxFtp and TC; Resco about 2 times slower

Verdict

As can clearly be seen, there is no all-in-one, best-in-all-scenarios FTP client.

If you only want to use slow connections for download only any of the clients will do. If you also want to upload over these slow connections, go for vxFtp – the other two clients are slighly slower.

The situation of high-speed connections (USB, Wi-Fi) is radically different. For downloading, go for either vxFtp or TC and ignore Resco (especially if you plan to download to memory cards instead of main memory). For uploading, however, stick to either TC or Resco and ignore vxFtp.

If you would prefer a free solution, definitely go for Total Commander. It fared pretty well in everything but uploading over low-speed connections.

Incidentally, I wasn't particularly happy to see that the download efficiency of Resco is still pretty bad. The people at Resco should indeed try enhancing the efficiency of the FTP module.

EDIT (Feb. 5, 2006): in the meantime, I've also tested the file transfer speed of my HTC Wizard with a considerably newer and much faster ROM version (GSM 1.12.10/OS 1.5.4.2, as opposed to GSM 01.01.10/OS 1.1.9.3). Both the "slow" EDGE and the high-bandwidth transfer rates skyrocketed. For example, the EDGE speed became 175 kbps from the previous ~100 kbps. And that's only 'pure' transfer speed - the entire Pocket PC is much snappier now. For example, it boots in after a soft reset in 51 seconds, as opposed to the previous 70. It's really worth upgrading your Pocket PC PE ROM if your ROM is "old" - the overall speed gain is enormous. You won't believe your eyes!

I will also write a decent overview of everything that needs to be known about the HTC Wizard ROM upgrade, the different ROM versions and brands. Stay tuned :)