It seems to be related to this upstream bug report at Gnome: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=532951 (slow download using sftp://)
** Bug watch added: GNOME Bug Tracker #532951 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=532951 -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to glib2.0 in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/250517 Title: gvfs performs slowly on bulk sftp transfers Status in The "G" Library - GLib: Confirmed Status in “glib2.0” package in Ubuntu: Triaged Bug description: Tested on a low-latency 100Mb fibre link. scp/sftp console clients are able to hit the line speed of around 10MB/s. Copying via Nautilus is almost 10 times slower, at about 1.6MB/s. This seems to be because it does not batch up writes, but waits for a reply for each. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/glib/+bug/250517/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
