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Should I use http or ftp links in /etc/apt/sources.list? What I mean is is using something like,

deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free

better or worser than using,

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free

I guess as apt uses wget to fetch things, this is same as asking if wget is faster on ftp. Thanks!

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No, apt does not use wget. It uses its own internal method. – Faheem Mitha Jan 31 '12 at 5:17

1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote accepted

You're not going to save much time using one over the other, but if efficiency is what you care about, use HTTP. An FTP client has to send a username and password and receive acknowledgments for those, and then issue several commands to set up the file transfer and receive acks for those, too. All this back and forth magnifies the effect of network latency; with 100-200ms ping times to the server you could waste a second setting up the transfer. With HTTP, the client opens the connection, sends one command and the file transfer starts immediately.

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1  
Always use HTTP. We need to discourage the use of FTP so that it can be made obsolete sooner. – Michael Dillon Feb 1 '12 at 7:57

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