For large transfers on a network I control I would use bare netcat, much faster than going over ssh and without having to figure out rsync server (probably easy, but I don't need another distraction.

  nc -l 8888 | tar -C /dir -xzf -
  tar -C /dir -czf - | nc server 8888

rsync however, is totally worth it if there is any chance the transfer gets interrupted.