MariaDB/MySQL: Import from dump (.sql) file remotely via network
After a few tests, I conclude that the server itself (where I want to import) is slow due to having a lot of process going on. I think that was obvious from the beginning but I was just frustrated that I've set identical setting on both machines and getting a significantly different benchmarks. 

The last test that I did was the following, 200MB sql dump file size I import to the destination server (server 2) using two method; locally &amp; remotely; bench marked against another server unit I have locally (server 1). Few more details:


Server 1 - CPU load 20% - 30%  and RAM load 50% - 60% 
Import on MariaDB 10.3 for 200MB sql dump file took less than 2 minutes.
Server 2 - CPU load 50% - 60% and RAM load 50% - 60% 
Import on MariaDB 10.3 for 200MB sql dump file took up to 8 minutes locally.
Import on MariaDB 10.3 for 200MB sql dump file took up to 18 minutes remotely.


Like I mentioned, both servers have similar my.ini settings. I did not investigate further why Server 2 is slower but the import perform miles better when I discard mysqldump --extended-insert=FALSE setting on my dump files after finding that this causes extremely slow inserts!. The other obvious probable reason would be the server is busy (hint: CPU load). Also, the data that I need to import is actually for another party to use but since the time zone difference between us and them is 6 hours (I just found out about this!), I didn't pursue this aggressively.