FTP Vs HTTP

The FTP and HTTP is widely used protocol. I was surprised when i asked about the difference between both and 90% of people failed to answer it. Most of the people told me that FTP is file transfer protocol and HTTP is Hypertext transfer protocol.

To make people aware it, i thought i should write about it.

1.  All protocol are assigned specific port number. To communicate with the protocol we need to request on specific port of server so the first difference between FTP and HTTP is their protocol they work on. FTP works on 20, 21 port number and HTTP works on 80, 8080.

2.  The HTTP is used to transfer data from browser to server and vice-versa. FTP is used to transfer  data from one computer to another computer.

3. The most important difference is that  FTP is connection oriented and HTTP is connection less. Once FTP connection is established it will persist till the time it is not disconnected while in HTTP on every request a new connection is created , data is processed and  response is send back.

   

Feature	FTP	HTTP
TCP Port Number	20 and 21	80 and 8080
Function of protocol	Used to transfer files from remote computer after connection is established.	Used to transfer web pages from remote server after internet connection is established.
Connection	It is connection oriented	It is connection less
RFC reference documents	RFC959, RFC765, RFC1738	RFC2616, RFC7230 and RFC7231