Your Internet Consultant - The FAQs of Life Online

6.28. What is FSP?

FSP is a file transfer protocol, similar to FTP, but it's healthier, better for the environment, and won't lead to tooth decay. The FSP FAQ says, "FSP is what anonymous FTP should be." It's designed for anonymous archives, and includes protection against overloading the FSP server and the network itself.

I've never used FSP, so I'll leave it to the FSP FAQ to explain why FSP is so wonderful in comparison to FTP.

From the user's point of view, the differences are not that great,
except that 
some of the more annoying features of FTP are gone.  Here are the main
differences.

a. The protocol can stand things going down: if the server or the network

falls over in the middle of a transfer, you can just wait until it comes
back 
up. You don't have to reconnect, and even better, if the server went down
90% 
through grabbing a file, you can continue from where you left off.

b. The protocol doesn't need a username or password. You just throw packets
at 
the server.  You don't have to identify yourself (though you're not
completely 
anonymous).

c. It's harder to kill off a site with an FSP server than with an FTP
server.
The FSP daemon is designed to be as lightweight as possible:  it doesn't
fork 
off any sub-processes, and it takes steps to limit the amount of traffic it

handles.

d. The user interface is completely different.  The interface that comes
with 
the package consists of eleven commands that you can call from the shell.
In 
effect, your shell is providing all the nice functions like command line 
editing.  This makes the interface much more versatile than FTP's.

e. FSP is a bit slower than FTP.  This is a feature, not a bug. The point is

to keep the communication lightweight, and not to flood the Net.
Discussion about the implementation and usage of FSP takes place on the Usenet newsgroup alt.comp.fsp. You can get a current list of FSP sites by fingering charro@bode.ee.ualberta.ca.

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