"Derek Fage" writes:

I'd also always thought FTP was more efficient then HTTP for larger files
and a search on the internet came up with this:

"There are two reasons why FTP is more efficient for retrieving large files
than is HTTP. Firstly, FTP involves a lower overhead of headers and
handshaking packets.

That's not necessarily true. It's not mandated by the protocol.
(Someone *please* correct me if you've got a reference.)

'course for unauthenticated access, there is *less* overhead for
HTTP, but for large files this difference is in the noise. (Not
only do you not have to "log in" for HTTP, but you don't have to
mess with setting up a data channel. These are just setup costs
though.)

Secondly, FTP can continue from the end of a partially
downloaded file - so an interrupted download session can be restarted,
perhaps days later.

Same for HTTP. You can even do crazy stuff like download chunks
of the file out of order (with a single request). (PDF files
take advantage of this.)

--kyler