Speed up network file transfers

So I was trying to transfer 38gig of small files using Samba from one PC to another PC and it started by announcing an hour and a half to do it.


Half an hour later this had grown to 7 hours.  WT? That's "Windows-time". hehe.

After some research I discovered that the using the Caja file manager in Mint 18 to browse and copy over Samba was the issue.

The solution was simply to mount the drive first outside of Caja.

Note: I did read that different Samba versions can be a cause too though I didn't bother with testing that. Maybe it would be faster but I'm happy enough to let it go at an hour and half. I have a life outside of PCs after all, lol.

Note 2: If you're on Mint with the Mate desktop, you may need to install Caja-share via the Synaptic Package Manager.

Anyway, to temporarily mount the drive I used:
$ sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.3.1/games /media/myshare/games -o guest,uid=1000,vers=2.1

Note: Playing with the last option (change 2.1 to 2.0) may improve speeds.

Good luck

Update:
The transfer slowed down again. I'm guessing partly because of there being too many small files. That got me top thinking about creating one compressed file as that would transfer quicker then many small files.
After some reading I came across this idea. Compress the files over a network directly to the target machine. This cuts out the writing of the compressed file locally.

To do where security doesn't matter I used netcat + tar:
To send a directory, cd to inside the directory whose contents you want to send on the computer doing the sending and do:
tar -cz . | nc -q 10 -l -p 45454
On the computer receiving the contents, cd to where you want the contents to appear and do:
nc -w 10 $REMOTE_HOST 45454 | tar -xz

The disadvantage is you don't get any feedback on progress. I use a network graph so can see data being transferred but that's it.