RE: ARIN Policy on IP-based Web Hosting

["Edward S. Marshall" <emarshal () logic net>]

On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Jason Slagle wrote:
> The problem is that SCP is several orders of magnitude slower then FTP.  I
> use scp, rsync (on top of ssh), nfs, and several other methods of moving
> files around, and ftp blows them all away.
>
> You also need to build a ftp like structure on top of it.  ie:  I pick the
> files I want instead of having to know the filenames.
>
> Until this happens, I can see no viable alternative to FTP.

HTTP, perchance? The only things missing are a machine-parsable file
indexing method (which would be easy enough to standardize on if someone
felt the need to do so; think a "text/directory" MIME type, which would
benefit more than just HTTP, or use a multipart list of URLs), and
server-to-server transfers coordinated from your client, which most people
have disabled anyway for security reasons.

But, you get the added benefit of MIME typing, human-beneficial markup,
caching if you have a nearby cache, inherent firewall friendliness (no
data connection foolishness), and simple negotiation of encrypted
transfers (SSL). And for command-line people like myself, there's lynx,
w3m, and wget.

FTP is disturbingly behind on features, some of which (decent certificate
authentication, full-transaction encryption, data type labelling, and
cache usefulness) are becoming more important today. Either the FTP RFC
needs a near-complete overhaul, or the HTTP and other RFCs need to be
updated to include the missing functionality.

-- 
Edward S. Marshall <emarshal () logic net>           http://www.nyx.net/~emarshal/
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