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Whats faster, WebDisk of FTP? Can you modify perms via webdisk? Pros? Cons?

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FTP works and will be faster than WebDAV in many situations, but using FTP securely is a different ballgame — secure WebDAV, on the other hand, is just WebDAV over HTTPS rather than plain HTTP. As noted by Scott, HTTP is a much simpler protocol from behind NAT and firewalls, which is a bonus.

Personally, I’d avoid both and use either sftp or rsync-over-ssh wherever possible for file transfer (both of which will operate very securely, including public-key authentication, without causing problems with most firewalls, and can compress the data as it’s transferred; sftp is “the capabilities of FTP over the SSH protocol”, whereas rsync is good for transferring lots of files, some of which may or may not have changed, from one place to another, including to a remote server over a variety of protocols).

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    I personally avoid both also, but remember WHO we are in the context of the question. For example, when i engineer systems I just scp files around, but admins use secure webdav. Ask the admins how to upload a file, they'd answer webdav. The answer changes depending on the target audience. The real question for me is about FTPeS or Secure Webdav.
    – J. M. Becker
    Oct 5, 2015 at 14:40
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Since WebDisk (AKA WebDAV) is HTTP protocol based it will have more overhead than FTP transmissions. So FTP would be faster.

As far as what's better, I would go WebDav because:

  • it's more user friendly
  • It's more portable. i.e. A lot less firewalls have issues with HTTP vs. FTP
  • It allows version control where FTP does not.
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There is a reason the FTP has been around since the beginning, it works and it's fast. I have no idea RE: WebDisk and this is not meant to be a flame/troll, but file transfer utilities and protocols come and go and yet there is still FTP. Yes it's insecure (there are solutions to that) but for what it does it does it's job very very well. Just my $0.02 ($0.01 in a state with sales tax ;).

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    Sorry to be offensive, but you're opinion doesn't mean much if you know nothing of the alternative.
    – Chris S
    Apr 21, 2010 at 22:42
  • Mmmkay there chief. I'll keep that in mind, thanks for the insight.
    – d34dh0r53
    Apr 22, 2010 at 16:54
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If you want a good solution to this post, I would use the free NULL FTP Server (it has WebDAV support if you pay for it) and run it as a SFTP server on port 22 (not FTP nor FTPS). Whoala! Single port, SSL secured WebDAV ftp! Amazing!

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