Is torrent better than ftp?

[adit1]

I downloaded ubuntu live CD through ftp. I found that the iso file was corrupt (MD5 sum do not match). I heard several advices that I should have used a torrent. Torrent is highly reliable because it does checksums in every part of the file it downloads.

Does it mean that torrent is better than ftp?
Doesn't ftp do checksums?

I hope that ftp should have some options by which I can make ftp to do checksums in every part of a file it downloads and make the download as reliable as it is done by a torrent. Can you tell me how to do this?

 

[wmorri]

Hi,

Here is the thing about downloading from an FTP server. Think of an FTP for this purpose as a file dump. There are a lot of files. Therefore it doesn't always to checksums on all the files, and all the files don't require checksums. It is up to the users of the FTP to do the checksum of the files on the FTP server.

What mirror did you d/l from? You might want to try a different mirror, too.

Cheers!

 

[adit1]

Essential feature missing in ftp

It is up to the users of the FTP to do the checksum

Doing checksum manually is not a problem. It will take only one minute. But what about the downloaded file (size 700 MB)? If checksum does not match, I have to discard the entire file. So a file transfer protocol should support doing checksums in every part of the file it downloads. This is essential. It is a wonder, a standard file transfer protocol like ftp and http do not have this essential feature.

 

[dude_se]

old thread, reported.

... anyway. imo it depends on the ftp used. some are fast and reliable, some suck. id only prefer to use an ftp from a well known company where the speeds would be good.

 

[root]

I think that we can let this old thread go because it is the original poster back to continue the question...

Anyway.

FTP or torrent?

I wouldn't say that any one is better than another,
in your case you say that you downloaded a file from FTP which you deemed corrupt as the checksums didn't match the published ones.

you are right in that torrent does do checksums on each bit it downloads, but that's only to ensure that it's from the right file. the end file can still be corrupt, or different from the original file published on the vendors site.

there is nothing to stop me adding a torrent of say an ubuntu CD and labling it as a redhat distro,

all the checksums on the bits (file chunks downloaded in the torrent will match). but the end result would still be bad.

Assume that you downloaded the same file linked to as an FTP mirror, you;re saying that there is a published checksum so you'd notice that it was different.

the MD5 checksums in torrents only checks the individual file chunks to guard against rogue data being saved in a file it doesn't compare the checksum of the file that you've downloaded to the checksum provided by the original publisher...

if you download a file by FTP it's up to you to compare the final checksums to make sure it's the file that you expected.

if you download a file by torrent it's up to you to compare the final checksums to make sure it the file that you expected.

 

[adit1]

Old threads

old thread, reported.

Can you give me links to these old threads. I can get some more information

 

[Datalyss1]

Can't say much about the checksum thang , but as far as P2P speed goes, I'm fed up with torrent sites. Downloads thrus Limewire are often much faster, even when only 1 person is sharing the file you want.

 

[tom-knox]

Re: Old threads

Can you give me links to these old threads. I can get some more information

He meant that this is an old thread (over 28 days) and that it was reported as a result.