Harry Putnam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Using rsync (not concerned here with its shortcomings under rcp.el)
> one always gets a message about "speedup": Speedup is 167.27 or
> something similar. Interpreting this is not documented in rsyncs
> manpages. Only a general reference that rsync speeds up file
> transfer.
I'm not sure what exactly it refers to, but the general idea is that
rsync uses a smart algorithm to find out the differences between the
source and the target file. If the difference is small, only little
data has to be transferred. The speedup tells you how much you were
able to gain by this. So if a file is 1000 bytes and the speedup was
4, then that means that rsync only had to transfer 250 bytes.
Note that you may get a speedup less than one (therefore a slowdown)
for small files. This is due to the overhead of computing the
differences and comparing them.
Some things are still vague, though: rsync can use compression,
similar to gzip. Does the speedup figure take that into account? If
the source and target files differ in size, which size is used for
comparison?
kai
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