Timeout and server block b/c of too many connections

Hi,

lately (for the last couple of weeks) I have frequent issues of timeouts when uploading many files (a few hundred), and sometimes I am completely blocked by the FTP server.
Today it happened again, so I called the support. They told me that I had more than 10 connections open, which causes timeouts and if it's too much, I'm blocked temporarily (as long as the connections are open). The supporter said there should be a setting in the FTP software to limit connections, and of course there should be. I already knew about a setting for number of transfers, which has always been set to 3 in WinSCP. Is there another setting of "number of connections per transfer"? Or another way of limiting the number of connections?
Is there a way to close open connections? Shutting down WinSCP does not help. Maybe there is another program that connects (I have an editor running that can do FTP). Is there a simple program to monitor connections? (I have Fiddler installed, but that seems like overkill ...)

Ideally, I don't know if that's at all possible, WinSCP (or other program) would monitor the total number of connections and give a warning when above X.

Thank you!

Regards, Ralf.

(v.5.5.3)

Shutting down WinSCP does not help.

What does this mean? You close WinSCP, but the connection are not closed? How do you monitor that? Or do you just mean what if you close WinSCP and reopen it, you do not get unblocked?

Thanks for your quick reply. Yes, I mean closing and reopening WinSCP does not help, at least not immediately. And how to monitor that is part of my question.
I see ftp connections using netstat in a terminal and with NetSpeedMonitor I can also see the programs that connect. But I see no way to filter just FTP, so I need to go through all (many!) connections and count ftps. I'm still searching for a way to count ftp connections, so I can at least see what's going on.

Finally I seem to have found something useful: NetworkTrafficView. But have not found a problem yet, there are only two connections from WinSCP, and one from phpStorm. I will keep watching and report here if I find anything interesting.

Anyway, could you please clarify: Is the "Maximal number of transfers at the same time" the same as max. connections? Or can there be several connections per transfer?
Thanks!

wdburgdorf wrote:

Finally I seem to have found something useful: NetworkTrafficView. But have not found a problem yet, there are only two connections from WinSCP, and one from phpStorm. I will keep watching and report here if I find anything interesting.

OK, let me know if you find anything.

Anyway, could you please clarify: Is the "Maximal number of transfers at the same time" the same as max. connections? Or can there be several connections per transfer?

Yes, there only one connection per transfer. In total you have one main connection + one connection per transfer.

Hello Martin,

just getting back to you with an update: The problem still exists. When trying to upload many files, I will have timeouts and will eventually be blocked. I talked to my hoster's support. He said, I should set number of connections to 1 or 0. I don't know how it could work with 0 connections, and anyway I cannot set number of transfers to 0 in WinSCP.
What he also said, is that the server counts ALL connections, including those of other users. It's a shared server with hundreds of sites on it. So if others already use 10 connections - bad luck. I don't quite get it - if it really works this way, it cannot really work at all. And for years I had no such issues. Anyway it would not be a WinSCP issue.

Regards,
Ralf.

Thanks for your feedback!