On Fri, 4 Oct 1996, Mike Long wrote:

> I disagree.  Most file transfer protocols cannot recover if they are
> interrupted in the middle of a file; so even if you've downloaded
> 7.999 MB of the 8 MB you have to throw it away and download all 8 MB
> again.  FTP and (more recently) Kermit are exceptions.

Actually, the most popular protocol for many years now in the BBS
world has been Zmodem, which does have restarts.

FTP has restarts only if you've an appropriate client. I don't
believe that most web browsers, for example, do restarts. Yet most
large programs downloading through the Internet these days (Netscape,
Explorer, other 5-10MB packages) come as one large file. From this I
presume that transfers aborting is not a major problem.

cjs

Curt Sampson    curt@portal.ca		Info at http://www.portal.ca/
Internet Portal Services, Inc.	
Vancouver, BC   (604) 257-9400		De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil.