I recently have been forced to upload about 6GB of files for somebody so that they can download them overseas (sent them a hard drive with the data, but it either died in transit or they are too dumb to get it working…).
It’s a slow, tedious process, as you might imagine, even with a cable modem. But the thing is, now that I’m about 100 MB shy of finishing the task, I can’t upload anymore.
The upload gets anywhere from 256KB to about 8 MB into the file before it disconnects itself with the notice “I/O Error: Broken pipe.”
Now, I know that it’s not an issue with lack of server space (I’m using a fraction of 100GB of server space) or server transfer allowance (again, a fraction of the allowed monthly traffic). Is it my local ISP, cutting me off to avoid me costing them bandwidth? It doesn’t seem to be related to high-traffic times, since the upload fails equally during the day and in the dead of night. Is it my FTP server, cutting me off to avoid some perceived abuse (i.e., the machine thinks anybody uploading this much to it must be doing something mailcious)? I have received no notifications from either source. I find it hard to believe that it might be something on my local end (computer, router, cable modem), since I’ve uploaded large files via them from this configuration for close to 2 years now without inicident or change.
Most likely they’ve disabled the FTP and Telnet ports on the remote host you’re trying to connect to. These two protocols are fairly low-security and have been replaced with “scp” and “ssh” types of facilities which are more secure.
You should check with whoever is the admin for the machine on the other side.
I was going to suggest a firewall somewhere between you and the recipient, but I don’t think that either that or disabling the ports would account for most of the transmission getting through.
Can you break it up into chunks somehow? If you just try to send the last 100 MB by itself, can it get through?
I doubt the remote FTP ports are blocked, as you get the “I/O Error: Broken pipe” error. If the ports were blocked, you’d never get this message. To get the message, you have to logon, AND transmit data to get the error. So the remote ports sound ok. My best guess would be a space issue. Even though the remote server has 100gb, maybe the retrieving folder is restricted by size. My vote is a space issue.
Ah! Interesting thought. I’ll try to dish out the files into smaller folders.
Thanks for that link.
It’s actually dozens of 2MB-60MB files. I had gotten down to the last half-dozen files, and was unable to put up even one of the tinier ones.
I’m past this problem for the moment, though–sent the last batch of files to my recipient’s server, instead of to my own. They’ll just have to gather up the files from two different servers.
I’m wondering if PA’s folder-limit issue is the case here, though. In the future, I’ll try many smaller folders.