ftp vs http vs scp

From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc_at_conman.org>
Date: Fri May 28 13:42:11 2004

It was thus said that the Great Patrick Finnegan once stated:
>
> On Friday 28 May 2004 03:53, der Mouse wrote:
> > HTTP can do the same only to a point.
>
> Since you seem to be in love with classic protocols, how about this...
> at least for non-anonymous transfers, you could just use kermit to
> transfer the file over an ssh connection. that'll handle all of your
> ftp "corner cases" that http doesn't support (btw, most http servers do
> support resuming file transfers these days), and adds functionality. I
> don't think even ftp supports some things like changing filesystem
> ACLs, or changing your password on the server, for instance.

  It can, but by using the FTP SITE command to sneak then through. And
since it's a site specific implementation, changing ACLs on a VMS FTP server
will most likely be different changing ACLs on a UNIX FTP server.

> For anonymous transfers, the only thing I can see you'd want that http
> doesn't provide (assuming a server and client that support resuming) is
> transferring multiple files over a single TCP connection (I don't care
> about), or transfering record-mode files from something like VMS (shove
> them in an archive format that survives bit-mode transfers).

  HTTP/1.1 can serve multiple requests on a single session; in fact, for
HTTP/1.1 that's the default connection type.

  -spc (Okay, HTTP is complicated by the fact that there are three
        versions of the protocol defined ... )
Received on Fri May 28 2004 - 13:42:11 BST