tar + rsync + untar

tar (from src to dest) + untar

rsync

tar -C /src/dir -jcf - ./ | ssh user@server 'tar -C /dest/dir -jxf -'

scp -Cr srcdir user@server:destdir

mkdir tmp; cd tmp
for i in {1..5000}; do dd if=/dev/urandom of=file$i count=1 bs=10k; done

time rsync -r  tmp server:tmp2

real    0m11.520s
user    0m0.940s
sys     0m0.472s

time (tar cf demo.tar tmp; rsync demo.tar server: ; ssh server 'tar xf demo.tar; rm demo.tar'; rm demo.tar)

real    0m15.026s
user    0m0.944s
sys     0m0.700s

wc -l rsync.log rsync+tar.log
   36730 rsync.log
   37962 rsync+tar.log
   74692 total

1a/ tar files from source machine over the network to a .tar file on remote machine

$ tar cf /mnt/backup/cache.tar ~/.cache

1b/ untar that tar file on the remote machine itself

$ ssh admin@nas_box
[admin@nas_box] $ tar xf cache.tar

2/ rsync files from source machine over the network to remote machine

$ mkdir /mnt/backup/cachetest
$ rsync -ah .cache /mnt/backup/cachetest

1a - 33 seconds

1b - 1 minutes 48 seconds

2 - 22 minutes

tar cf - ~/.cache | ssh admin@nas_box "(cd /destination ; tar xf -)"

rsync --compress --stats --no-blocking-io --files-from=fileList.txt -av otherSystem:/the/other/dir/ dest/

ssh otherSystem "cd /the/other/dir/;  tar cf - ." | tar xvf -

Host otherSystem
    Hostname dataSource.otherSide.com
    User myUser
    Port 22
    ProxyCommand ssh -q -W %h:%p intermediary.otherSide.com
    IdentityFile   id_rsa.priv