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A Better FTP?

Posted by Cliff on from the we-can-rebuild-it-we-have-the-technology dept.

cppgodjavademigod asks: "I used to work for a company that sold a file transfer product for datacenters. It supported checkpoint/restart, encyrpted password transmition, asynchonous job procesing, etc. Is there an Open Source project that aims to provide a better FTP? I'm looking for something that makes use of multiple paths (for machines connected via more than one network), job restart, job control, secure transmission (over internet), maybe even tunneling over HTTP and redundant servers (via some kind of private P2P protocol)."

2 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. This is a great idea - but it won't catch on. by Anton+Anatopopov · · Score: 2, Insightful
    There are a couple of problems. The main one is that most of the servers out there understand the FTP protocol, it has critical mass, and it is 'good enough'.

    This means that there is really no incentive to change to it.

    The second problem is that for most people, most of the time, their Internet connection is pretty reliable. This is also improving all the time as more and more people move to DSL and cable modems instead of dialling up.

  2. Re:HTTP/1.1 by Slynkie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'll be honest up front: I don't have a good comparison of either the features or performance of HTTP/1.1 vs. FTP.

    That said, I have to wonder whether HTTP/1.1 could be a true solution, for the simple fact that HTTP was not created specifically for the purpose suggested. In addition, for future development purposes, would we really want to bog down HTTP with features not used in everyday web transactions?

    *shrug*, just my initial thought, I might not have a clue what I'm talking about =)