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From: Ivan Shmakov <oneing...@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: HTTP vs. FTP
Followup-To: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:45:35 +0700
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>>>>> principalkec  <principal...@gmail.com> writes:

	[Cc: news:comp.protocols.tcp-ip.]

 > Here is a new anonymous ftp server for many of your freesoftware
 > downloads.

 > ftp://infinity.kmeacollege.ac.in

	Apparently, it's also an HTTP server:

http://infinity.kmeacollege.ac.in/

	The FTP protocol, whose current specification (RFC 959 [1]) was
	published back in October 1985, is long time obsolete for most
	common purposes.  It lacks many conveniences of the
	now-ubiquitous HTTP protocol (like proper MIME type encoding and
	unambiguous time stamps), while having several idiosyncrasies of
	its own, like having three (!) data transmission modes, and
	using separate connections for command and data transfer, thus
	demanding for explicit support from routers doing transport
	(port) address translation (variously known as NAT or PAT.)

	It's not uncommon for HTTP proxies to support the FTP protocol
	as well.  It means that there're FTP users that actually use
	HTTP clients to communicate to FTP servers.  Such a protocol
	conversion is, however, prone to errors, since the target FTP
	server and the HTTP proxy may be configured to support
	different, and incomparable, data transmission modes.

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc959

-- 
FSF associate member #7257