I find it convenient to transfer files over the network. I have an Ethernet network available and wondered how fast it can be to transfer files that way.
So I set up an FTP Server (Bitvise SSH, which is free for personal use) and did some tests and made some interesting discoveries.
The Sony A1 supports 3 protocols for transfer: SFTP, FTPES and plain FTP. When doing a transfer over the internet, SFTP is the easiest to set up and the most secure.
Unfortunately, the transfer speed varies with the protocol used.
Doing a LAN transfer over Ethernet, I got these speeds:
- plain FTP: around 950 Mbits (limited by the interface, which 1Gbit/s on the A1, for the record, the A1 II supports 2.5Gbit/s).
- FTPES: around 800-850 Mbit/s
- SFTP: 200-250 Mbit/s (much slower, probably due to the A1 processor not fast enough to encrypt the data).
Over WiFi, things equalize a bit since it's slow even on 5G. The max I could reach, regardless of the protocol, was around 300Mbit/s, except for SFTP.
I've settled on using SFTP only when transferring over the internet. Locally, I will just use FTPES, which is only around 10% slower than plain FTP (and Bitvise SSH supports only SFTP and FTPES) and more than 2 times faster than SFTP.
I could use a card reader or simply connect the camera through USB. It's probably faster, especially the CFe card readers, which could reach 10-15X the speed of gigabit Ethernet. But I forgot my card in the reader enough times that I prefer to avoid it. Besides, CFe readers are quite expensive.
I also have an A7R III that supports FTP, but no Ethernet and the WiFi is only using 2.4Ghz, so the speed is much, much slower. Not really useful.