I traditionally thought ftp is faster then http download. I did some tests
using libcurl for both ftp and http. When download the same set of files,
http is always much faster than ftp, for example,
Download 229 files through Intranet, it takes 20 seconds for http and 48
seconds for ftp.
Download 94 files through Internet, it takes 15 seconds for http and 75
seconds for ftp.
Why http is so fast? Does libcurl (or any router) cache downloaded files
like the web browser?

Bill Wei
Received on 2005-12-22