note 19603 rejected from ref.ftp by spic

I've got this working fine but with slow sites and when sending a batch of files, the PHP times out! I am using a commercial host so cannot tell them to increase the PHP timeout and in any case I think that isn't appropriate. I am thinking in terms of first opening a connection and then sending each file with a reload of the page (using a parameter to increment the file to be sent). This could also give a "progress" indication rather than freezing. Is this sensible or can anyone suggest a better approach? Thanks. Neil.