Files to download from website - via ftp or http?

[steveroot]

Hi all,

our website has some price lists which customers can download. WE've just moved to a new provider and they've given us access to an FTP area for our domain.

My question is whats the better option? currently the files are held alongside our web pages and download quick enough, but would ftp be faster? more reliable?

Regards,
Steve Root http://www.rootskitchens.co.uk

[mkaufman]

I would go with FTP right away. Yes, it is more faster and more reliable.

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[DieezNuts]

uhh....it's faster if you have like 10 users downloading at a time but more than that (if you have a lot of people who visit and download from your ftp server)...http is the better option because it doesn't slow down like ftp as the number of downloaders grow

[DynaMike]

I would go with letting them download the stuff from the website instead of FTP.

Too many things can go wrong when you let others access your site via FTP.

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[PGA]

Well, if your price lists are bigger than 1.5 MB, then you should work with ftp because it's faster. But... if your price lists are only a TXT of 200k, then you should use http because visitors'll have to wait for the ftp server to login.

[This message has been edited by lugarweb (edited January 01, 2000).]

[steveroot]

Thanks for the information all.

We only get about 5 downloads a day of price lists (less than 200K), so for the time being I'm going to keep them on the http side for the main download link. I will give the ftp location in the future as a backup though.

By the way, you may be able to help with the next topic I posted - "attachements to sendmail", the next step....

Thanks,

Steve Root http://www.rootskitchens.co.uk