Can anyone clarify the claim of 1.5-4x speedup over rsync? Does this also apply for data that's already compressed? If so, how is it achieved?
Assuming that rsync runs close to line speed on your computer, then a 1.5x speed up would be by definition impossible for already-compressed data. Moreover, rsync already offers compression, so any improvement would have to be from multiplexing. Maybe that does get 1.5x on some connections, but I'd be skeptical until I saw some real data.
Of course not, but there are ways like multiple connections and threading (preventing blocking or slow io) that might increase throughput considerably, but normally? Nah.