<
networking> (Or "FTP
site", "FTP
archive") An
Internet
host where program source, documents,
e-mail or
news
messages are stored for public access via
anonymous FTP,
Gopher,
World-Wide Web or other document distribution
system. There may be several
archive sites for e.g. a
Usenet newsgroup though one may be recognised as the main
one.
FTP servers were common on the Internet for many years before
the
World-Wide Web (WWW) was invented and are still used in
preference to web servers for serving large files such as
software distributions. This is because FTP is more efficient
than
HTTP, the protocol of the WWW. Many sites therefore
run both HTTP and FTP servers.
[
Is FTP more efficient? How much more?]
Some well-known
archive sites include {
Imperial College, UK
(ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/)},
UUNET, USA (ftp://ftp.uu.net/).
See also
archie,
GNU archive site,
mirror.
(1998-07-02)