[LUG] Why HTTP transfer quicker than FTP?

[John Horne <J.Horne at plymouth.ac.uk>]

Hi,

Well the subject line almost says it! I've just been trying to transfer the
2.2.17 kernel - 14MB in size - from the UK mirror site. Using gftp it
transferred about 256KB then 'stalled'. It occassionally did a bit more but
the transfer rate was very poor at about 2-4KB/s at best. So I stopped it.
Using Netscape to access the same site, and transferring the file via the
browser, it shifted it at just over 100KB/s!

So why would an HTTP transfer be much faster than the old FTP? Whilst I
admit that both the FTP server and web server may not be running on the same
machine, there surely shouldn't be such a large difference in transfer rates.

John.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK           Tel: +44 (0)1752 233914
E-mail: jhorne at plymouth.ac.uk
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