It also depends on the geographic distance. I am located in the Netherlands and have optic fiber 100Mbit up/down.
Code:
$ time echo ls | ftp -a ftp://ftp.bit.nl/pub/OpenBSD/5.3/packages/amd64/ >packages.nl
0m1.73s real 0m0.03s user 0m1.53s system
$ time echo ls | ftp -a ftp://ftp.eu.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/5.3/packages/amd64/ >packages.se
0m8.18s real 0m0.04s user 0m1.52s system
$ time echo ls | ftp -a ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/5.3/packages/amd64/ >packages.ca
0m4.47s real 0m0.01s user 0m1.29s system
Here it is rather strange that the download from Canada is faster than the one from Sweden