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?"

gopher

[mz001b]

I think the only reasonable way to do these things is to put up a gopher site.

Screw all of that!

[Anonymous Coward]

Use telnet and screen capture the VT100 Term buffer!

Re:gopher

[ErikTheRed]

Nah, use finger... then you get the advantages of perverted humor as well...

what are you serving again?

[Telastyn]

1-6mb files?
heh, most 1-6mb files I see are on irc fserves :P

"Files," eh?

[Anonymous DWord]

1 to 6 megs, huh? Why not use Kazaa like everybody else? :-P

Boy do I feel the pain...

[Anonvmous Coward]

"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.

Re:Both...

[KDan]

Yeah, but come on... "files from 1-6Mb in size"... now what do you think he's serving here?

Would you download that on your work connection? Heh.

Daniel

TFTP, definitely TFTP

[mekkab]

Which one to choose? Why, its trivial!

Re:do both...

[enos]

Try both - see which gets used more.

Then report back to us in the first ever Answer Slashdot.

Use ZMODEM !!

[boy_afraid]

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.

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). :) HA HA!

Change it to, Ask slashdot to do my job.

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

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.

Re:gopher

[Library Spoff]

jeesh. kermit's the thing nowadays daddio..

now where did I put that acoustic coupler for my spectrum...

Re:gopher

[ahknight]

ZModem! Really! Come on, CRC32 checksumming over a serial link was awesome. Worked great in XTermish things that would take it:

$ sz myfile.txt
*SZ
Now downloading "myfile.txt".....
Saved "myfile.txt".
$

Re:how about rsync?

[MisterMook]

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.

Re:Screw all of that!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont slam telnet hacking my schools telnet boxes and stealing the cs finals from my professors directory is how I got my degree. Ahhh if only everyone ran telnet.

Ah, FTP

[Richard W.M. Jones]

As the co-author of a moderately popular FTP server [cpan.org], I think it's a great shame that FTP is regarded as a second-class citizen in the world of the web.

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.

Re:gopher

[commodoresloat]

If you can't think of perverted humor dealing with gophers then you just aren't thinking very hard.

Re:gopher

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked at a Unv in the midwest a while back. The semester before I entered the Unv was the last semester you could get a vanity ID (ie, pick your own userid). Starting the semester before me all new undergrads were assigned a "license plate" ID consisting of their intials and 4 random numbers. However faculty/staff, GTAs, GRAs, and a few other folks were permtited to get a vanity ID. A GTA came in one day my first semester and asked to have her userid changed. She wanted her first initial of her first name and whole last name. That was common enough. I went to check if it was available and I did so with finger (which is why your post made me recall this). I asked her for her name. Her name was Angela Dick. I kid you not. [e-mail]. I almost couldn't keep a straight face. I asked her many times if she was sure she wanted that userid, even writing it out on paper for her to make sure it was right. It was. That's what she wanted. LMAO

Why /.?

[Piquan]

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?

Look at all the stupid answers...

[PincheGab]

Why is it that some /. questions posted are so dang stupid? We are seeing so many stupid and smart-assed answers because the questions is so awfully phrased. We are not made aware of the context of the use, the kinds of people doing the downloading, the download material, security requirements, the implementor skillset/proficiency, the other existing technology at the server location, the technology used to download, etc... In short, all the information really necessary to recommend any download method halfway seriously.

So we are left to be smart-assed and provide shots in the dark as to what the "best" solution is to this.

9 out of 10 Anonymous Cowards agree

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

even better

[lactose99]

just do what I do and mail people newly-obseleted [slashdot.org] floppy disks

Re:I wouldn't worry about it...

[fonebone]

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.

didn't you hear?

[cygnus]

John Doe wants a clickety-click-drag-n-drop client,

didn't you hear? "john doe" changed his name to "joe sixpack," so we can ridicule his deficiencies more.

Re:gopher

[minion]

Zmodem? C'mon man! (pulling up sleeves) Ymodem-G is the king, no contest. On a 2400 baud modem, I'd get an extra 12 cps with that baby. 12 cps * 8 hours per day downloading * 7 days a week equals:

((12 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 7) * 2 ) / 1024 = 7,257KBs more per week!

*2, as 2 bytes per char, and /1024 to figure in KB

Back then, an EXTRA 7.2M a week was a lot of bad graphics porn.

A real BOFH

[Lord Sauron]

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.

Re:Different, not better or wose

[The Cyberwolfe]

Hmmm...technically correct, but completely useless answer. What the heck is a Micro$oft rep doing on /.?

Re:Different, not better or wose

[huckleup]

So, in other words, her brother is a dumbass...

Who's the user?

[Arandir]

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?"

Just put it on an SMB share.

[U6H!]

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!

XML is probably best

[pyth]

As a veteran computer engineering expert, I find myself suprised by the number of problems that can be solved by XML. In fact, every time I get a problem these days, my first thought is "can XML do this?". In many cases, like this one, the answer is yes!

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.

Re:FTP is just as doable over SSL

[cryptor3]

sorry for repetition, apparently missed the last comment.

Frisbees

[Aluminum Tuesday]

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!

Use ICMP!

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:College blocking ftp?

[The Ape With No Name]

"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.

Re:HOW ABOUT UPLOADING???

[CmdrWass]

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.