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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?"
I haven't really noticed any reliability issues with http anymore. If it starts loading it usually finishes, and I haven't run into any corruption problems. Maybe if you were serving huge files ftp would be a good idea, but for 1-6 mb it's probably not worth it.
Use telnet and screen capture the VT100 Term buffer!
But in my experiences, HTTP for whatever reason goes faster (not entirely sure why), and FTP doesnt work for some because of firewalls.
Try both - see which gets used more.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
rsync is a great protocol, fairly robust, can be wrappered in ssh (or not), supports resuming transmission, and operates over one socket.
seems like the best of both worlds to me.
the real question is - do you control the clients that are going to access you? or is it something like a browser (which doesn't support rsync).
Do it for da shorties
As long as you're willing to secure your FTP server and do the simple stuff like watch out for file permissions - FTP is much better.
HTTP is restricted by browsers, many of which will not support files larger than a certain size. Furthermore, FTP allows for features such as resume, etc...
The real question, however, is what are you trying to use this for? What's your intended application?
If it's a file repository for moderately computer literate people - FTP is definitely the way to go.
If it's a place for average-joes to store pictures, maybe HTTP is your best option. Sacrificing a bit of speed and capabilities such as resume might be made up for with ease of use..
http://www.babysmasher.com
http://www.openingbands.com
Whenever I see a list of FTP mirrors with one HTTP version, the HTTP version is faster and more reliable 9 times out of 10.
It's generally simpler to get to from a browser, which is where 95% of people's online life is anyway. Yeah, you can rig up a FTP URL, but it seems a bit kludgey and more prone to firewall issues.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
HTTP does not have firewall issues, does not need authentication, does not (by default) allow directory listings, and is the same speed as FTP. It's a good deal for general file distrubution.
FTP is quickly becoming a special-needs protocol. If you need authentication, uploads, directory listings, accessability with interactive tools, etc. then this is for you. Mainly useful for web designers these days, IMO, since the site software packages can use the extra file metadata for synchronization. Other than that, it's a lot of connection overhead for a simple file.
FTP does have one nice advantage that HTTP lacks: it can limit concurrent connections based on access privleges (500 anonymous and 100 real, etc.). Doesn't sound like you need that.
Go with HTTP. Simple, quick, anonymous, generally foolproof.
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.
And I wouldn't care about the opinion of someone who would actually judge you over what friggin protocol you use to provide downloads. Such an utter nerd is somethig that I can not relate too. Maybe after I use Linux for a few more years, who knows.
The question is, "what do you want to do?" I run an FTP server (incidentally affiliated with etree.org, lossless live music!) and I need what it can give me. Namely I need multiple classes of login, each with a different
1) number of available slots
2) speed limit
3) premission set
Some people can only read files at 60KB/s, some can read and write (to the upload dir) at the same speed, come can only browse, etc. etc. For this kind of a setup, FTP is great _IF_ you keep your software up to date; subscribe to bugtraq or your distro's security bulletin or both.
On the other hand, HTTP is great when you want to give lots of people unlimited ANONYMOUS access to something. I'm sure there is a way to throttle bandwidth, but can you do it on a class by class basis? In proftpd it's a simple "RateReadBPS xxx" and I'm set.
As always, choose the tool that fits _your_ purpose, not the one that everyone says is "best"; they both have good and bad qualities. And http can be just as secure/insecure as any other protocol.
The time of day is 29:33.
If you're only offering files to a group of users who you can give passwords to, you could even use SCP. (Secure copy...uses sshd on the server side)
It all depends on the application. I only use SCP to move files around if I have the choice, just because I like better security if I can have it.
But if you want to offer files to the public, I'd recommend offering both FTP and HTTP so people can use the most convenient.
Security-wise, HTTP is a big win over FTP if only because it makes your port-filtering easier - "allow to 80" is simpler and less likely to cause unintended holes than all the things you need to do to support FTP active and passive connections. Certain FTP server software has a reputation as having more security holes than IIS, but there are FTP servers out there that are as secure as Apache.
From my point of view (A network administrator), I provide both ftp and http servers for the same files (stick all downloads off /download or something, and set the ftp root to that). This has several benefets...
1) I've found HTTP transfers are a little faster than FTP transfers (just personally, and I can in no way prove it - it may be user error, or just the programs I'm using)
2) I've found that FTP clients are everwhere - Windows, Linux, BSD, everything I've ever installed has included a command line FTP client, but not a web browser unless I specifically remember to install one. Further more, most of the "live CDs/boot disks" that I use don't have a web browser, but do have FTP... Thus, if you're serving files that a person with out a web browser/server might need, I'd set up both...
3) FTP security is what you/your daemon makes of it. wu-ftpd has a long history of being rooted... ProFTPd dosn't. VSFtp doesn't. HTTP security is the same way... IIS has a long history of being rooted... Apache doesn't... *(Not to say that there haven't been occasional exploits for these platforms)
There is no clear "Use this" or "Use that" procedure here, it depends entirely on your situation, what you're serving, what your network setup is, etc...
-PhaseBurn Welcome to Linux country. On quiet nights, you can hear windows reboot.
I guess that's not what s/he wants. It sounds like anonymous downloading of publicy available files - whatfor do we need any encryption then? There are no passwords to secure, no sensitive data to secure. You'd get only hassles from MSIE users who never heard about sftp..
The efficiency differences will be debated forever... the common wisdom is that FTP is more efficient, but there is also evidence to the contrary. That isn't the point.
To me, this is a problem of authentication. If you want EVERYONE to have these files, why not just use the HTTP server? If you're targeting a select few people, then why not use the built-in authentication mechanisms of FTP?
Yes I know there are authentication mechanisms for HTTP, but they're arguably harder to implement than setting up an FTP server.
Are your clients only using web browsers to retrieve these files? I'll get flamed for this, but web browsers were not designed for FTP, and thus are klunky at it. HTTP wins there again.
Don't worry about it. Just use HTTP and let the FTP bigots flame away.
There's no reason to use sftp for publically available files. This is for the exact same reason that you wouldn't use https. There's no need for encyption of something that is freely, publically available. Checksums, yes, encryption, no.
I personally would say go with http for the files, as it'll be much easier for people behind http proxies to download, it'll get cached more often by transparant proxies, and most browsers support browsing http directories FAR better than FTP directories.
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
This is not true. FTP does not use UDP fpr any purpose.
The data connection is most assuredly NOT UDP. It is a TCP connection just like the control connection. But yes, the latency required to initiate a transfer (due to more handshakes) generally makes FTP slower in general.
P2P?
I've written a tutorial on how you can use P2P on your website to save bandwidth, space etc. An obvious way to do this would be to run a P2P client and share the file on a simple PC & Cable Modem. This works, but it is a bit generic and un-professional. A better way to do this may be to run a P2P client such as Shareaza on a webserver. You could then control the client using some type of remote service (Terminal Services, for example).
P2P has it's advantages. Such as:
- Users who download the file also share it. This is especially useful if the client/network supports Partial File Sharing.
- When you release the file using the P2P client, you only need to upload to only a few users. Those users can then share the file using Partial File Sharing etc.
- Unlike FTP and HTTP, they aren't connecting to your webserver. Thus, it saves bandwidth for you and allows people to browse your website for actual content, not media. (Though, media is content). In addition, there is ussually "Max # of Connections" allowed to a server or FTP. Not so on P2P.
- P2P Clients have good queuing tools. At least, Shareaza does. It has a "Small Queue" and a "Large Queue". This basically allows you to have, say, 4 Upload slots for Large Files (Files that are above 10MB, for example) and one for Small Files (Under 10MB). Users who are waiting to download from you can wait in "Queue", instead of "Max users connected" on FTP.
Though, at it's core, all of the P2P I know of uses HTTP to send files etc. But the network layer helps file distribution tremendously.
While this does help with the evasion of an acient protocol, it forgets one of the poster's main goals. The poster worried HTTP is slower ... than FTP . SFTP is very slow considering the overhead each packet has because of encryption. -js
What I don't care for with FTP is the continuous setup/teardown of data connections. What is even worse with active FTP is that the client side of the data connection establishes server ports, and the server becomes the client (I'd like to be able to use plug-gw from the TIS FWTK for FTP, but this is not possible for the data connections). However, even when enabling passive FTP, the data connections are too prone to lockup. The difficulty of implementing all of this in C probably contributes to the FTP server vulnerabilities.
Still, if you want both (optionally anonymous) upload ability and access from a web browser, FTP is the only game in town.
From the network perspective, the rsh/rcp mechanism is cleaner (in that there is only one connection), but it still has the problem of either passing cleartext authentication or establishing unreasonable levels of trust with trivial authentication. In addition, with rcp syntax you must know much more about the path to a file, and there is no real "browsing."
Many say that SSH is the panacea for these problems, but sometimes I am not concerned about encryption and I just want to quickly transfer a file. The SSH man pages indicate that encryption can be disabled, but I have never been able to make this work. SCP also has never been implemented in a browser for file transfers. I should also say that I've never used sftp, because it has so little support.
Someday, we will have a good, encrypted file transfer protocol (and reliable implementations of that protocol). Sorry to say, but ftp, rcp, and scp are not it. What will this new protocol support?
Boy, I never thought that I could rant about file transfer software for so long!
The question does not contain enough information to form a proper answer.
Don't start with finding the solution, figure out what it is you want, what you want it to do and then find the right tool. We can not tell you which is right with almost no information about the use of it, for what and what is the average user profile etc.
HTTP and FTP can be equally insecure, but it shouldn't be much of a job to properly secure a ftp.
my sig
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?
FTP supports a single connection (Passive, or PASV in the actual protocol), which is what most web browsers use by default.
No, no, no. Jesus. Everyone always gets this wrong. FTP in any mode uses two TCP connections. Passive or not, there is a channel for data and a separate channel for commands.
The difference is that passive-mode means that the client initiates the data connection. The default FTP behavior is for the client to connect to port 21 on the server, and then the server initiates a data connection to the client.
Non-passive FTP clients are very hard for firewalls to keep track of, especially when NAT is involved. Passive is a little better because both connections are outgoing.
But at the same time, passive mode makes the server firewall's job tougher, because it requires an large range of incoming ports for the data connections.
No matter what the mode, FTP is not very firewall-friendly.
This is slightly off-topic and sftp isn't what he should be using, but you can change the user's shell to /usr/bin/sftp and add it to /etc/shells. I've only tried it with OpenSSH under Linux, so YMMV. I got the idea from an OpenBSD list, though, so it should work most anywhere.
To answer the original question, when given a choice, I always download by http. It usually takes less time to set up the connection, probably becasue of those ident lookups that most ftpd's still run by default.
sftp is not the way to go if you want public access of files. sftp would be the way to go if you were required an account to download/upload files.
If the files you are serving are large then use ftp. If the files are smaller (less than 10MB) use http.
http is great, I sometimes throw up a file on there if I need to give it to someone and it is too big to e-mail. (Happened recently with a batch of photos from the car show)
Since I already have a web page it was easy to just throw the file in the http directory and provide the link in an e-mail.
I like http for the most part. I doubt anyone will call you lame for using it, unless the files are huge.
-Chris
Everyone disables the only unique thing FTP can do (third-party transfers) to prevent a variety of attacks by proxy. It might be worth accomodating decrepit machines that lack HTTP clients, but there are no actual advantages to using FTP.
Unfortunately HTTP is still a more secure protocol because HTTP clients can easily implement SSL encryption for passwords and sensitive data transfer. When you're dealing with a client who insists on using an outdated, but "easy" FTP client, it's not easy to tell them they have to change, and it's even less easy to tell them what they have to change to.
FTP is notoriously difficult to secure while retaining ease of use for the clueless end-user.
-Sara
You're also slightly less likely to be threatened with root exploits when using HTTP instead of FTP. Especially if you're already maintaining an HTTP server on the particular machine in use--because you already HAVE that security hole open. Rather than opening another hole, you're using one that's already there.
-Sara
I also assume the following:
I would say that you should go with HTTP for sure. Of course, you can provide both, but there are some key reasons for using HTTP.
Easier Configuration Perhaps I'm just not that swift, but I've found that web servers (including Apache) are easier to configure. This is especially true if you have any previous web server experience. Of course, the FTP server is more complex due to its additional features that HTTP doesn't have, but assuming that (c) is true, then you won't need to mess with group access control rights and file uploads.
Speed This whole "FTP is faster" stuff is not true. HTTP does not have a lot more overhead than FTP; it may even have less overhead than FTP in certain cases. Even when it does have more overhead, it is in the order of 100-200 bytes, which is too small to care about. HTTP always uses binary transfers and just spits out the whole file on the same connection as the request. FTP needs to build a data connection for every single data transfer, which can slow things down and even occasionally introduce problems.
Easier for Users Given assumption (d), your users will be much more familiar with HTTP URLs than FTP addresses. You could just use FTP URLs and let their web browsers download the files, but then you lose the benefit of resuming partial downloads.
Simple Access Controls Though some people need to have complex user access rules, you may very well just need simple access controls. HTTP provides this (look at Apache's .htaccess file), and you can even integrate Apache's authentication routines into PAM, if you are really hard core.
There are a few main areas where FTP currently holds sway:
Partial Downloads Web browsers typically don't support partial downloads, but the fact of the matter is that the HTTP protocol does support it (see the Range header.) The next generation of web browsers may very well include this feature.
User Controls Addressed above.
File Uploads Again, HTTP does support this feature but most browsers don't support it well. Look to WebDAV in the future to provide better support.
In summary, just use HTTP unless you need complex access rules, resumption of partial download, or file uploading. It will be easier both on you and your users.
It sounds like anonymous downloading of publicy available files - whatfor do we need any encryption then?
If not for the encryption, then consider what else you get: a well-defined TCP connection. It's a cinch to configure a firewall to allow sftp connections, while FTP firewalling will give you prematurely grey hair (and if it doesn't, then you're not doing it right).
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I would say go with http.. my reason is simple.. my college blocks ftp! There are two sides of the story, first off, the complete blocking of ftp started a week ago when they switched firewalls.. they couldn't get the ftp to work, and they decided it wasn't a high priority so they didn't do anything to fix it... After yelling at the IT department for half the day I got the priority up. But besides that.. Even before, when they allowed ftp, it was only active ftp.. I was unable to go to a website, click on a file that is served from ftp:// and download it! I'd have to use flashfxp or another client to d/l files.. I was able to figure that out quickly, but what about the other 99% of the school that wants to download say shareware from download.com or a driver from somewhere.. they are denied! FTP is a superior protocol for file transfer in my opinion, but administrators don't seem to care about it as much as they do http.
They serve different purposes, and each was designed to meet those needs. Each one has its own positives and negatives.
True, but ftp has far more negatives. The connection model ftp uses, in which the server connects back to the client for data transfers, is a horrible idea. Surely, there must be a benefit to this method (or else why would ftp have become such a standard?), but I've yet to hear it. Passive ftp (PASV) is supposed to compensate for the fact that clients behind NAT can't use ftp, and passive is pretty much supported everywhere now. But passive doesn't solve the problem of many-connections, it just shifts it: With passive ftp, there is still a seperate "data" connection for every file transfer, or transfer of directory contents. It's just that with passive ftp the data connection is initiated by the client to some high-numbered port on the server. This allows clients behind NAT to do ftp, but it makes firewalling the server a pain in the ass, especially if the server is (god forbid) behind nat itself. It's relatively easy to setup a mailserver, or webserver, or ssh server, on a machine behind nat (assuming you can forward ports on the nat gateway). But try doing the same with ftp. Passive connections won't work, unless the ftpd is configured to only use a certain range of high ports for it's data connection, and the firewall forwards that entire range. You'd think with all these connections, the protocol might support multiple connections from one login, ie list another directory while downloading. Well, thats not the case at all, you have to login again if you want simultaneous transactions.
And then if you want tunneled connections... oh boy, what a pain in the ass:
I set this all up for someone recently, and it DOES finally work, with tunneled passive ftp connections to a proftpd server behind a nat gateway, but it was a big pain. Due to the way proftpd works (not sure about other daemons...) the passive connections are directed to the interface the client is connected to. So, with an ssh tunneled connection, proftpd sees the client connection TO 127.0.0.1 (because thats where sshd is). So it tells the client, connect back to me for the data connection, my IP is 127.0.0.1. And the client tries to connect to itself, and fails saying "can't open data connection". The solution was to point the tunnel not to 127.0.0.1, but to the external IP, and have the nat gateway forward internal traffic back to itself. So traffic comes in over ssh, over to the firewallwall (where the nat rewriting happens), and then back to the same machine for ftp.
If people could just use sFTP clients, this wouldn't be an issue _at_all_ (One client connection, one tcp connection! Hey, what a concept!). But due to the integrated ftp clients in programs like bbedit and dreamweaver, I suspect we'll be dealing with that bastard protocol known as ftp for quite a long time....
Damn, reading back over this, I'm kind of ranting. BUT ITS ALL TRUE!
Sorry bout that.
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The reason to use sftp on publicly available files or hhtps is so that people <*cough*>Carnivore</*cough*> can't track what I'm doing online. Sure, they can tell what sites you are visiting, but they can't tell what content you're looking at, or which files you downloaded... Imagine a time when you want to download DeCSS for your linux boxen from a foreign server, but someone is logging your downloads <*cough*>Verizon</*cough*> and the RIAA wants access to those records... If they don't know what you downloaded they can't (potentially unjustly) prosecute you...
Being in IT for a large Fortune 500 company that sells an operating system among other things (no, not Microsoft), I can share some of my expereinces with you. So take it for what it is worth.
Our FTP servers run both HTTP and FTP providing the same content in the same directory structure. There are five servers that transfer an average of 1-2 TB (terabyte) per month each, so they are fairly busy. On a busy month each server can go as high as 7 TB of data transferred. File sizes range from 1 KB to to whole CD-ROM and DVD-ROM images. I think the single largest file is 3 GB.
The logs show a trend of HTTP becoming more popular for the last several years and not stopping. It is currently at 70% of all downloads from the "FTP" servers via HTTP. While the remaining 30% is via FTP. Six years ago (I lost the logs from before this time, they are on a backup tape but I am way too lazy to get that data), it was completely reversed. 75% of downloads were via FTP and 25% were via HTTP. 90% of all transfers are done with a web browser as opposed to an FTP client or wget or something.
One thing we learned was that many system administrators will download via FTP from the command line directly from the FTP server, especially during a crisis they are trying to resolve. They do this from the system itself and not a workstation. The reasons for this are a bit of a mystery. Feedback has shown that we should never get rid of this or we might be assassinated by our customers. We thought about it once and put out feelers.
I would say if you don't need to deal with incoming files and you file size is not too large then stick with HTTP. Anything over about 10 MB should go to the FTP server. An FTP server can be more complicated. It seems like the vulnerabilities in FTP daemons has died down in the past year or so. Also, fronting an FTP server with a Layer 4 switch was a lot more tricky because of all the ports involved. If you want people to mirror you then go with FTP or rsync for private mirroring. In reading the feedback, most power users seem to prefer FTP, perhaps because that is what they are used to. Also, depending on the amount of traffic you might need to consider gigabit ethernet.
The core dumps being uploaded are getting to be huge. Some of those systems have a lot of memory!
In FTP the sender connects to the receiver, but client issuing commands does not have to be either of those two machines. As designed, FTP should be able to allow a client to send data between two arbitrary machines. Its an infrequently used feature, and I'm not sure if it is implemented by all clients, but it is, technically, a feature that HTTP doesn't have.
Starting multiple TCP connections for a single file download can be advantageous, because of congested network paths.
If there are 500 TCP downloads ocurring, each download will theoretically get 1/500th the bandwidth.
Therefore, by opening multiple TCP connections, you will increase the amount of bandwidth for your transfer, at a cost to everyone else using the connection. This is because you've effectively doubled the size of your receive window (one for each connection), causing the host you are downloading from to stuff that many more packets down the pipe.
The problem is, when everyone does it, it completely negates any advantage to using this method. It also leads to packet loss, since you have that many more TCP connections (each with its own receive window) fighting for pieces of the pie.
I see too many FUD replies here:
:-)
1) HTTP doesn't support resumed downloading.
- That's ridiculous. It has since HTTP/1.1 years ago. In fact, it can even do things like request bytes 70,000 - 80,000, then 90,763 - 96,450, etc.
2) HTTP doesn't support security/authentication
- Ridiculous. HTTP has an open-ended model for authentication and security, many of which are secure and standardized. If you REALLY need security, use HTTPS.
3) HTTP doesn't support uploading
- HTTP/1.1 has had this for a while. Netscape 4.7, Mozilla 1.1, and IE 4+ support this. I must admit though, it sucks.
Several people have pointed out the real differences:
1) FTP doesn't like firewalls
- Passive FTP fixes this, but it has quirks and limitations.
2) FTP supports directory listing, renaming, uploading, changing of permissions, etc.
- This is what FTP is for
- This can be done in HTTP, but requires serious work
- If the scope creeps, shell access would be better.
I provide a mirror for a couple of largish open-source sites, and several of them specifically request that sites provide FTP service as preferred over HTTP. A couple of reasons:
1. Scripts which need to get a list of files before choosing which ones to download - automated installers and the like - are easier to implement with FTP.
2. FTP generally seems to chew up less CPU on the host. I can serve 12mb/s of traffic all day long on a P-II 450 box with only 256mb of memory.
3. "download recovery" (after losing connection, etc.) seems to work better in FTP than HTTP.
Lynx lets you browse, but you can't do globbing, so you see lots of irrelevant crap, and you have to select files to download one at a time.
For getting (possibly multiple) files whose location you don't know in advance, FTP is more flexible and efficient.
The ocean parts and the meteors come down
Laid out in amber, baby.
- Do you have bandwidth issues? If you are serving files to many people, FTP servers allow maximum concurrent users, which can be useful. I know you can do this with HTTP, but it's difficult to segment the downloading >1Mb files traffic from the normal site traffic. A separate service also allows you to use all the Quality of Service stuff in the 2.4 kernel nicely.
- Do you have a large array of files that the user might want to download, such that using an FTP client to ctrl+select multiple files is the right answer compared to having your users click on twenty links and have to cope with twenty dialog boxes?
- Do your users need to be able to upload files to you? This can be done with HTTP, but you'll need some PHP processing or similar on the server, it doesn't support resuming, and it won't work through many company firewalls, and therefore isn't a good option. HTTP uploading it particularly hopeless for large files, as it provides no user-feedback.
However, you should NOT use FTP if you answer no to either of these:- Are you running some flavour of unix? There just aren't any robust Windows FTP servers. Yes, I'm prepared for the flame war about this.
:) - Can you be bothered to keep your FTPd patched? ProFTPd and WU-FTPd are both frequent appearers on bugtraq. You need to stay on top of the patches, or you will be 0wn3d.
Simple, see?FTP implementations frequently use a fixed, small window size. HTTP on the other hand will honor the system limit, almost always larger even without tuning.
t mls _tcp tune.html/ faq.html
Dramatically simplified, it means that the connection can send a lot more packets without hearing back from the far end, enabling the connection to reach higher speeds (imagine a phone call where you had to say 'okay' after every word the other person said. Now imagine only having to say it after every sentence. Much faster.)
The tiny window size of (most crappy legacy implementations of) FTP starts to affect download speed at just 25ms latency, and has a huge effect over 50ms.
A properly tuned system with HTTP can make a single high-latency transfer hundreds or even thousands of times faster than FTP.
Relevant links:
http://www.psc.edu/networking/perf_tune.h
http://www.nlanr.net/NLANRPackets/v1.3/window
http://dast.nlanr.net/Projects/Autobuf
What are you using Lynx to connect to the ftp server? That's the reason it's slow. Try a real client like NcFTP and when you do, make sure to take note of the sheer power.
mget blah[1,2,3].iso....
Get the drift? HTTP indexes are rather stupid if you ask me, it's FTP without the features. And before you whine "But I don't need the features", neither do I most of the time, but it's nice when they're there.
It seems everyone talks about DOWNLOADING. How about UPLOADING? How fast and wonderful is HTTP for that?
The main strengths of HTTP over FTP for file transfers are:
The other differences one sees are due to server design issues. I.e. most FTP servers are large and spawn a process per connection, which makes FTP sessions much slower than HTTP sessions. But if you want to use FTP, there are very fast FTP servers out there.
Overall, in today's world, it does not make sense to use FTP unless you have a requirement from your users. For public access to files, use HTTP or something more modern, such as rsynch, or a P2P network.
As usual, you should answer such questions by thinking about your target users and asking yourself what they are likely to be most comfortable using. Chances are it's their main tool, the web browser.
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