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If you are a non-computer science student, this might be a useful read for you. Have you ever wondered what FTP and HTTP means? Did you want to know why they are fundamentally different? What their uses are?
Here are some key differences.
HTTP stands for hypertext transfer protocol. FTP stands for file transfer protocol. From the expanded abbreviations it is clear that HTTP follows more of a ”linking” mechanism, given the ”hypertext transfer” usage. Whereas, FTP is more to do with transfer of files from one system to another system.
Both protocols use the Internet to achieve their end objective. This might be the only significant similarity between them. And both of them use TCP/IP.
Now there could be a question here? So what the heck! Can I not use HTTP to transfer files. The answer is YES. You can do it. But it takes longer than if you do with FTP. FTP transfer is faster.
Now why is FTP faster? In FTP, unlike HTTP, no meta-data is added to the binary files to describe them. Binary files are just raw-transmitted over the Internet. But somehow FTP is shadowed by HTTP for transfer of data. Here are the reasons why HTTP edges FTP over file transfers.
HTTP reuses existing connections with servers. Which makes for dedicated pipelines, and faster data-delivery. The routers in the network-path would have the path-information ready before-hand. So the next time a connection is made, no time is lost is getting a data packet to its destination.
