During a FTP upload, the total size of the file is send?

Question

When you send a file by HTTP, web browsers send the total file size in the http header.

Do you think it\'s the same with the FTP protocole?

Martin

Answer 1

FTP has a number of transfer modes, but none of them send the entire length of the file beforehand. You can see them all in RFC 959, section 3.4.

Note that the SIZE command defined in RFC 3659 is purely for downloads, not uploads.

Answer 2

No, an FTP file transfer is treated as a stream of bytes that ends when the connection is closed normally. There is a new "SIZE" command for FTP defined in RFC3659, but this is a fairly recent addition that I would guess isn't seeing a lot of use.