[AFMUG] customer needs to upload lots of files ... best way?

[Ken Hohhof via Af]

I have a customer who keeps asking for more upload speed because it takes 
too long to upload a bunch of files to his server at a datacenter.  He 
thinks this should not cost a lot because he is just "bursting", 
unfortunately what he wants would require a dedicated link from the tower to 
his house.  He will upload around 100 files when he finishes a project and 
it takes about 20 minutes, apparently that's a problem.  What I see when he 
is uploading is about 50% duty cycle, apparently a file uploads, then dead 
time, then another file.  So I'm thinking he first needs to improve how 
efficiently he uses his Internet connection.

He says he is using drag and drop in Windows 7.  I assume this means he is 
using Remote Desktop and using drag and drop within the RDP session from his 
local drive to a drive on the remote server.

Would I be right that RDP drag and drop is not an efficient way to transfer 
lots of files?  (I've never done that myself.)  What would be the best way?

Personally, I would just use FTP, maybe create a tar archive first, but he 
is using Windows.  If he needs security, it seems there are choices like 
SFTP, FTPS, SCP.  If HIPAA level security is not required, vanilla FTP would 
avoid the encryption overhead.  I found an article on how to set the number 
of concurrent connections in Filezilla to something like 10, would that keep 
the link 100% utilized?  My other FTP client is WS_FTP, I don't know if it 
can do concurrent file transfers.