ftp archives disappearing? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

13 Mar 2007

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> 

...
 It's a shame that there wasn't a widely-adopted
data transfer protocol that 
was truly bi-directional.  
True, though there are and have been many good not-so-widely adopted 
solutions. 

...
 Both FTP and HTTP largely revolve around moving data 
in one direction only. Even given the predominant client/server model of the 
time, it's a shame that the "main" protocols weren't designed with the 
foresight that one day we might want to move just as much stuff *to* 
a site as we were taking *from* it. 
Client/server is still essentially the model for the vast majority of 
internet use: it's almost all asymmetric.  As in, depending on the site, 100 
to 1000 times or more as much data going one way than the other.  Even 
profiling sites like YouTube, where people actually do upload large amounts 
of data, individual clients download far more. 

HTTP was designed for the common case in it's problem space.  It shouldn't 
be surprising that it's not optimal for other cases.