Suggestion: Support for Mode Z Technology

[guru_2]

I was reading on RaidenFTPds forum about this and I saw FlashFXP wasn't listed. Thought I would just bring it to your attention so you could begin working on this.

http://www.raidenftpd.com/en/features.html

note : MODE Z implementation is based on IETF draft, and is not a proprietary protocol of RaidenFTPD, the original authors of the draft are J. Preston (NSC) and TJ Saunders

-guru

[Oldbunny]

Originally posted by guru
I was reading on RaidenFTPds forum about this and I saw FlashFXP wasn't listed. Thought I would just bring it to your attention so you could begin working on this.

http://www.raidenftpd.com/en/features.html

note : MODE Z implementation is based on IETF draft, and is not a proprietary protocol of RaidenFTPD, the original authors of the draft are J. Preston (NSC) and TJ Saunders

Very interesting subject about the MODE Z Technology which can Improve and Accelerates FlashFXP the Transfer Speeds.

If you wish to transfer a large file by traditional FTP, what will you usually do? Probably get a compression utility and compress the file and send it to the other peer, and the other peer has to have his own compression utility to decompress the file you sent.

With MODE Z technology , just send the file, and it's done. Transmission is automatically compressed in the background, bandwidth will not be wasted, no compression utility is needed.

Depending on the file types, some files can usually be compressed at a very high ratio, such as HTML documents, text files and LOG files. If you often work with these kind of files by FTP, you can absolutely be benifited by MODE Z technology

Besides that, it also accelerates directory listing speed for about 3-4 times depending on the size of your directory

Mode Z compatible Softwares:

FTP Voyager, Serv-U, ShareIT FTP, NetTransport, Core FTP, Smart FTP, Gene6, GetIT FTP, RaidenFTPD, BlackMoon FTP Server.

[dodowolf]

If I am not wrong, NcFTPD supported Tar Bz2 Compressino on the fly long time ago, and what you need to go it to manually get *.tar or *.bz2

[DYN_DaTa]

Originally posted by Oldbunny
Mode Z compatible Softwares:

FTP Voyager, Serv-U, ShareIT FTP, NetTransport, Core FTP, Smart FTP, Gene6, GetIT FTP, RaidenFTPD, BlackMoon FTP Server.

If you click on the link you'll see this paragraph:

"The vendors and authors of the above softwares didn't make any promise for MODE Z implementation, but they are working on it so it's possible to see them to support MODE Z in the future".

So ... it should say "Mode Z future/possible compatible softwares". Read always the small words ... . This method is, according to the RFC draft, based on the ZLIB Compression Engine, so it could be interesting; anyway i would like to see real benchmarks of this method applied to ftp normal operations.

[bigstar]

We will do our best to support MODE Z in v3.1 or 3.2.

[darkone]

Originally posted by DYN_DaTa

This method is, according to the RFC draft, based on the ZLIB Compression Engine, so it could be interesting; anyway i would like to see real benchmarks of this method applied to ftp normal operations.

It's all about how you define world 'real'. Mode Z has it's advantages on small not so busy server, with enough cpu-power to take advantage of whole bandwidth with the compression. On large servers it will degrade performance, if compressed output is not cached. (building cache from stream, isn't easiests tasks to do ) My own biased opinion is that lifetime of 'Mode Z' will be comparable to what diskcompression utilities had, perhaps even shorter. As usual this approach was developed by unix people, who know nothing about scalability (sorry, but that's the way it is... apache2, has been in developement for years, and they still not haven't got a stable release :\)

Summa summarum:
- Increases network efficiency on files that can be compressed. Decreases efficiency on certain files.
- Adds latency in 'not so well programmed' implementations
- Increases transfer cpu-usage by hundreds of percentages
- Adds memory bandwidth usage (buffer copying)
- Not usable on gbit networks, if server is to take advantage of full bandwidth
- Works very well on 100mbit and slower connections with 'properly' coded daemon and client implementation. (read(), zip(), send() is not such... :])
- For best efficiency requires more than one CPU... (in well coded application )

.... but then again, what do I know

[darkone]

Did I mention... it's overhyped feature just like 64bit processing, hyperthreading... etc

[DYN_DaTa]

dark0n3, i really appreciate your technical comments about Mode Z, it's good to learn something new each day but ... i strongly disagree about one of your comments:

" ... apache2, has been in developement for years, and they still not haven't got a stable release ..."

Auch, that's unfair. I've been using the Apache 2.x branch for nearly a year and a half on several sites (medium companies, intranets, with Tomcat connectors ...) and i haven't noticed any performance/crashes problems, seems stable to me. Of course, the vast majority of Apache admins are using the 1.3 branch and the fact that, for example, the PHP group warns about using PHP and Apache 2.x could lead to confuse future Apache users or admins that are thinking about upgrading their servers. It's also true that some modules only work on Apache 1.3 but it also true that new powerful modules have been developed for Apache 2.x and others have been enhanced; finally we can't forget that Apache 2.x is 'windows-friendly' (opening the Apache world to many, many IIS-slaves)

[darkone]

With being unstable, I meant that there is still no 'stable' release of it. (I think last version I saw in debian package manager, was considered as experimental )

[MxxCon]

indeed i don't see this feature to be all that super hot..
highly compresable files are usually small(ish) text/html/image image. and those don't take that long to transfer..chances are it takes more time to setup transfer(port/pasv/stor/etc) than to transfer file itself
it will not do anything for big precompressed files that takes long time to transfer

there is somewhat similar implementation for dir listing, server keeps complete dirlist in .gz .bz .tag whatever format for quicker retrieval.
you can check it out at ftp://ftp.uu.net

i'm not against MODE Z, but don't get your hopes up for 4x transfer speeds

[Tribl]

well raidenftp just released the first working version including mode z and u can read about it here they also included some transfer protocols into this thread for comparison

[Zer0Racer]

Originally posted by dark0n3
.... but then again, what do I know

You're so modest I think you've proven time and again just how much you know

[DYN_DaTa]

Originally posted by Tribl
well raidenftp just released the first working version including mode z ...

What about CPU/RAM usage?. Imagine dozens (¿hundreds?) of users downloading and listing large directories and the server applying a 80% compression ratio ... anyway i don't know why the ftp client names are hidden with 'x', seems a bit 'obscure' benchmark for me :/

[Tribl]

Originally posted by DYN_DaTa
What about CPU/RAM usage?. Imagine dozens (¿hundreds?) of users downloading and listing large directories and the server applying a 80% compression ratio ... anyway i don't know why the ftp client names are hidden with 'x', seems a bit 'obscure' benchmark for me :/

dont know about cpu usage, i only wanted to give an update on the subject , i guess the clients name is "x"'d because there aren't any out there doin mode z except for some betas, and maybe those developers dont want people yet to know that they'll support it, or maybe the raiden team decided so, becasue they didnt want to advertice a single ftp client software..... so many questions and no answers

[Jessy]

[Feature Request] MODE Z technology

will FlashFXP spport MODEZ in Feature?


MODEZ:
http://www.raidenftpd.com/en/features.html

http://www1.ietf.org/internet-drafts...deflate-02.txt