Slashdot Mirror
FTP: Better Than HTTP, Or Obsolete?
An anonymous reader asks "Looking to serve files for downloading (typically 1MB-6MB), I'm confused about whether I should provide an FTP server instead of / as well as HTTP. According to a rapid Google search, the experts say 1) HTTP is slower and less reliable than FTP and 2) HTTP is amateur and will make you look a wimp. But a) FTP is full of security holes. and b) FTP is a crumbling legacy protocol and will make you look a dinosaur. Surely some contradiction... Should I make the effort to implement FTP or take desperate steps to avoid it?"
Use telnet and screen capture the VT100 Term buffer!
1-6mb files? :P
heh, most 1-6mb files I see are on irc fserves
1 to 6 megs, huh? Why not use Kazaa like everybody else? :-P
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
"HTTP is amateur and will make you look a wimp"
You really gotta watch out for things like this. I know one guy that got a 'click me' sign on his back because he used HTTP instead of FTP.
Which one to choose? Why, its trivial!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Then report back to us in the first ever Answer Slashdot.
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
Come on people, use the Z-Modem protocol. It can resume transmission on a file transfer where HTTP or FTP can not. The only way a FTP or HTTP can resume transmission is with the GetRight tool.
:) HA HA!
I remember in my days of BBSes with X and Y Modem, and then when Z-Modem showed up we all couldn't be happier. When some idiot in the house picked up the phone and disconnected you from hours and hours of downloading the latest Liesure Suite Larry, I just reconnected and started to resume my downloads (but only if I had enough credit, then I might have to upload some crap).
Why do we have all these new ask slashdot question that sounds like a tech with a years experience is asking how to do his job?
I vote for a new section, "How do I do my job" with a dollar bill as the logo.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
I don't know, after Rsync's last album I've decided that they're probably too old for serious contending in the boy-band heavy marketplace.
FTP is a quirky, extensible protocol, great for uploading, downloading and sharing files, and you can do wonderful things with FTP and databases which web servers only dream about.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Let me get this straight. You went to search the web and got conflicting, likely ill-informed, and inconclusive reports. So you went to Slashdot?
So we are left to be smart-assed and provide shots in the dark as to what the "best" solution is to this.
ZModem-1k can kick both FTP and HTTP's asses. It's fast and can reconnect. It can even send filenames! Quite frankly, I don't see why you are still using 20+ year old protocols. ZModem came to us in the 80s, way more recent than the crumbling Internet you are referring to.
Well, I have to go now. Now you can go back putting that chrome exhaust pipe on your Civic.
just do what I do and mail people newly-obseleted floppy disks
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Maybe I'm slow, but I havn't found a way to do batch file transfers with HTTP. There's just no way to do it without clicking on every single damn link, selecting "save as", and then downloading. Sure you can generally get several going at once, it's still not the same as selecting several folders and doing a batch transfer in my FTP client. Or is are there apps or methods of doing this for HTTP?
if you're using linux, you can use wget. and if you're on windows, you can get cygwin and then also use wget.. there's gotta be other utilities with the same features, but wget is definitely the classic and does pretty much everything you'd need.
when the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Would use sftp in a SSH tunnel over IPv6 encapsulated in IPv4 over X-25. Don't forget to encrypt, obviosuly with an unknown russian algorithm, not only the files but also the instructions on how to download'em. If you have some spare time, instead of sftp you can develop your own [undocumented] protocol.
This way you won't look like a wimp. Jaws will drop, you'll be recognized as a uber BOFH and your peers will respect you.
So, in other words, her brother is a dumbass...
Who's the user? If it's WIndows lusers, then by all means use http. It makes their life easier. But if the users are *NIX, Mac or other, then use ftp. These folks have a clue and can deal with it.
Warning! The above is sarcasm. But it is so apropos. Paraphrased quote from a conversation I had with a Windows luser:
"I need to find a good FTP program so I can download this software I found. Which do you think is better, ProFTP2K for $25, or should I spend more for EZDownloadFTPPlus at $50?"
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I just put all of my public files on a big smb share. Nothing beets M$ for secure file sharing. Just don't put none of them underscores in you'r domain names. Those broken legacy unics domain controllers can't read them. Boy... That had me stumped fer a while. Thank god for the helpful M$ community, or I'd still be try'n to email all them big files. -U6H!
The biggest advantage of XML is that software does not have to be changed for a different XML data format - they all use XML, the standard bracketing syntax. I know most major browsers support an XML view mode, so they don't need to be upgraded to download by XML.
I'm sure that there are people out there saying that XML is inefficient, but that's simply not the case. We can use special XML commands that allow us to include large blocks of binary data -- at the expense of portability to 14-bit computers, of course. In total, an XML download should only have about 30kb of metadata added to it. Author, guid, PGP signature, original source, license, and all that good stuff.
We can hope for the day when the need for binary transfers will be over, since everyone will be using XML files.
sorry for repetition, apparently missed the last comment.
Stand on your rooftop with a CD burner and frisbee CDs to anyone who calls to initiate a transfer!
The ONLY way to serve files!
It's pure genius! Transfer files via ICMP echo requests! Add a special byte in the ICMP header or data to make the target recognize it as a file transfer and not spam you with echo replies.
Why not implement FTP over ICMP? It will be the best ever!
"After yelling at the IT department for half the day"
You were added to the watch list and the administrators went about doing something more important.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
You bring up a good point... HOWEVER, that wasn't the question:
An anonymous reader asks "Looking to serve files for downloading (typically 1MB-6MB"...
That's probably why "It seems everyone talks about DOWNLOADING."... Because some of us read the initial post before replying.