Re: apt: http vs. ftp?

[David Teague <dbt@tinuviel.cs.wcu.edu>]

Hi Jason

I never pretended to know anything, but I find your response
amusing, and your discussion and that of others enlightening. I
suspected that ftp might not be faster, but did not know why.

Nathan Norman suggests that HTTP 1.1 has enhancements that make it
faster than ftp, hence apt uses it in preference to ftp.

I still would like more discussion of this issue, some reasons why,
etc. Mostly for my enlightenment.

--David
David Teague, dbt@cs.wcu.edu
Debian GNU/Linux Because software support is free, timely,
                 useful, technically accurate, and friendly.

On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:

> 
> On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, David Teague wrote:
> > > I am not a networking authority, so I asked a colleague xxxx
> > xxx who is.  He says http is optimized for relatively small
> > files, mainly web pages, which are not terribly large, (what? 2 or 3
> > K?)  whereas ftp was designed to be optimal files that may be very
> > large.
> 
> Ask him how you optimize a protocol for file size and when he fails to
> explain that then you know the truth :>
> 
> Jason