Why Does It Take So Long To Connect via FTP?
 

I have a dedicated server running Red Hat 7.2 with WU-FTPd version 2.6 for FTP access. The server is only 500 MHz, 32 MBs of RAM, and has a 5 GB drive but it is pretty quick via HTTP, SSH, SSL, etc.

I can't figure out why it takes it so long to connect whenever I login or upload/download any files (even tiny scripts). It just says connecting for like 15 seconds each time then downloads the file right away.

I checked through the settings under FTP Server in Webmin but I couldn't find anything that pertained to how long it takes to accept a connection. Is there such a thing? Or is it just because my server doesn't have a lot of MHz or RAM? Unfortunately, I can't upgrade anything on it so I have to make do. It only receives about 50 visitors a day (at the most).

I know it's not my host's network because I also have several accounts with them on their shared servers that have A LOT more accounts and RAM, etc. Whenever I login or upload/download via FTP it does so within 2 seconds.

Any ideas?

Could it be any firewall settings? Have you tried with flushing ipchains? /sbin/ipchains -F

Thomas

Usually a problem like that is caused by it trying to do a dns lookup or a ident lookup. Because you probably haven't set that up it just waits till the lookup times out and then continues on. Usually the dns lookup can be solved by simply adding an entry in the file /etc/hosts.

I also vote for the DNS lookup. I seem to hit this problem periodically over the years after installing server after server. It's just a "brain fart" on my part....

You can also check the /etc/resolv.conf file for valid DNS entries (or in this case, invalid ones). Invalid entries can be nothing more than your host not having access to the DNS server specified.

Good luck!

I had one like this come up 2 days ago, even if you have the correct entries specified in the /etc/hosts file if your actual dns setting are wrong you will get this delay, example from my prob I had, I have 4 machines on my lan I have all the names and ip's in my hosts file, only one machine connects to the internet, but for the heck of it I put my dns (ISP's numbers ) on all machines, now when I tryed to use my webmail server on local lan it would take 1 minute to send a message to another machine on local lan, I removed dns settings from systems and now it doesn't even try to do a dns lookup and goes right off the hosts file, so case in point even if your hosts file is correct, if you can't get to the dns that you have specified that might be your problem, I hope this helped ya.