peter wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] ftp and ftp-data' on Thu, Nov 18 at 04:46:
On Wednesday 17 Nov 2004 22:14, Danny Sauer wrote: [...]
Then again, I think that active FTP is a stupid protocol in general (passive's almost as stupid), and that FTP is in general not a terribly good protocol, esp. in the presence of lots of other good protocols (notably http 1.1 and rsync). :)
http errr Hyper text transfere protocol is thet not TEXT are we talking web pages or binary files here ..?..
How do you think all of the images on web pages are downloaded, let alone the other media files (pdf, flash, etc)? http is a nice, simple protocol that also supports handy stuff like partial transfers and compression, among others (in 1.1 - 1.0 didn't have that stuff). FTP, while somewhat convenient in the use of a separate data and control channel (telnet's used on the control channel), is not at all simple from a network point of view. There's no good way to secure ftp, aside from using a tunnel created using some other protocol (which most clients/servers don't support anyway), and it has the handy side effect of doing dumb things like changing the file in transmission. Have you ever downloaded a binary in ascii mode? Why would I want my file transfer protocol screwing with line endings when I can just use a good editor instead? Why would I want the server opening up new connections when I've already got a bidirectional link established with the server that could be used? Etc. --Danny, who hates ftp