Re: Efficiency of FTP URLs

cwilson@spry.com
Mon, 25 Jul 94 11:31:02 PDT

Simon writes:
>the FTP protocol creates a new data connection for every single
>transaction - the saving comes from not having to set up the control
>connection; leaving the control connection open still leaves FTP as being
>even worse than HTTP (sad, isn't it :-)

This is true - the reason why WinMosaic leaves the control connection open
is that this initial control connection can be expensive to set up, and if
you are connecting to an anonymous server that is often overloaded (for
example, wuarchive.wustl.edu or ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu :^), without cacheing the
control connection you'll be able to get each document, say, 1 time for every
six tries. Cacheing the control connection, you'll have this only once (for
the first document), then you'll be "logged in". I know, ugly in comparison
to the statelessness of HTTP, but that's FTP. It's really not intended to
serve "documents" in the same sense as HTTP.

-Chris

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Chris Wilson Spry, Inc.
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