rsync opening and closing local ports

[Mark Young]

Hi,

I am noticing that when I rsync data between two machines I see a constant 
stream of ports, at least 20 per second, being opened and closed on 
localhost.

I'm using the following rsync command:

rsync --blocking-io --compress --verbose --recursive --partial --times 
--rsh=ssh mylargefile myuser@remotehost.com:

I see the localhost ports being opened and closed both via "netstat -an" and 
via my firewall (Agnitum Outpost).

This seems to be very inefficient and certainly causes problems with 
ZoneAlarm Pro firewall and possibly some with the logging subsystems of 
other firewalls.

Obviously it's not rsync's fault if the firewall has problems coping with 
high traffic loads, however in this case it does seem that rsync is causing 
an unnecessarily high load opening and closing ports to localhost.

I tried to capture the localhost connections in Commview but failed to get 
it to recognise any localhost connections - perhaps that's due to my lack of 
knowledge of Commview, and there doesn't appear to be a cygwin tcpdump. I 
was planning on trying Ethereal at some point but don't currently have it 
installed.

Enough rambling. Sorry.

Has anyone witnessed the localhost port opens/closes that I'm mentioning?
Can anyone explain what rsync is doing?

Cheers,
Mark

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