Why use FTP site

[Westat1]

I want to set up a FTP site for my outside clients/partners but need to convince management. I know why I want it, but am having having a hard time putting it in words.
The goal is to avoid emailing 5 mg woth of images and resending and resending..etc

Any ideas?

[Tapolyai]

* Most FTP clients allow the "restart" of downloading, thereby making the customer happy. (How many times does someone retry a 5MB DL if it fails at the 4.9MB mark on their dial-up line, AND they have to start all over?)

* Most FTP transfers tend to be faster then HTTP file downloads.

* FTP is more forgiving of of lost packets, noise, etc. by retransmitting. HTTP does not always do such recovery.

* Server licensing of HTTP servers usually higher then FTP servers. Using an FTP server would reduce the concurrent user licences on the HTTP server.

* FTP, with the right browser & OS is almost transparent when it comes to sending and receiving files. In most OSes the task can be done through drag & drop within a file browser. This is not the case with HTTP, unless helper apps are loaded.

Can't think of anything else right now...

[sun818]

Unless the client will send you 5MB files, an FTP server is unnecessary IMO. You can download 5MB files via a web server very easily. But trying to upload via a script can cause timeouts if the file is too big. By requesting FTP, your firewall rules may need to be loosened which your network admin may not want to do.

[lorax]

Not to mention that some email servers have limits on the size of an email message. If you exceed it they unceremoniously dump the message without any notification. No way to know if it was actually sent/received or if it never got there - to prove if it was ever sent. Too easy to blame the system.

[Tapolyai]

Don't have to "loosen firewalls" if you put the files/FTP server outside of the firewall. That's where the Web server should be anyway, right?!

Downloading or uploading a 5MB file on a dial-up using HTTP is a pain. I recall several occasions when trying to DL a patch from MS using HTTP on a dial-up and fail at 99%... But I HAD to do it. This is not the case with the client - they will just go elsewhere.