Re: Comments on the HTTP/1.0 draft.

At 12:07 AM 12/5/94, Larry Masinter wrote:
>Why isn't this a problem for FTP servers returning ASCII data; they
>translate native EOL convention to CRLF too...

A FTP server only does this if the user requests ASCII mode. And then, it
is doing it for a single file transfer. Not every single transfer of the
same text file for every user request. FTP servers also handle many orders
of magnitude FEWER requests per hour than a Web server on the same host.
FTP servers can afford to waste a little time as they are typically batch
oriented file transfer processes with no user interface to speak of. HTTP
servers are part of a real-time interactive system where long transfer
times and unnecessary delays are unacceptable.

Have you ever tried using a set of Web pages being served by a FTP server?
I think you'll understand why HTTP was developed as a more efficient
alternative. Simply making HTTP as inefficient as FTP defeats its entire
purpose.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chuck Shotton
cshotton@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu                           "I am NOT here."

Received on Monday, 5 December 1994 05:12:30 UTC