when transferring many small files, http with persistent connections will blow away an ftp mirror, any day any night.
What is why the days are numbered. for small files, use http. for large files (iso), use bittorrent. Plus the bonus of http headers are very
important for caching hierarchies.
{corrections from anyone......?}
Just the comment that you seem to be focusing strongly on the typical use of a single user downloading something large and of high demand, like an iso. As an example, I have a small company which receives a single upload from each one of 40 customers every month, since they are sending us graphics to be published in a magazine. The uploads are usually 3 to 10 files, each ranging from 20 to 100MB, so on average we get 600MB from each customer.
Today we use FTP based on the perception I had that FTP is significantly better at transferring large files and maximizing bandwidth. Using max b/w is also important since most of the customers (by virtue of Murphy's law) wait until the very last minute before sending. :-) So HTTP is less efficient you say, and BitTorrent is not applicable.
I'm left again with FTP, aren't I? Or scp, but honestly I don't even know which mechanism scp uses.
Cheers,
-- Rodolfo J. Paiz rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.simpaticus.com
