from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
archive site
FTP archive
<networking> (Or "FTP site", "FTP archive") An {Internet}
{host} where program source, documents, {e-mail} or {news}
messages are stored for public access via {anonymous FTP},
{Gopher}, {World-Wide Web} or other document distribution
system. There may be several archive sites for e.g. a
{Usenet} {newsgroup} though one may be recognised as the main
one.
FTP servers were common on the Internet for many years before
the {World-Wide Web} (WWW) was invented and are still used in
preference to web servers for serving large files such as
software distributions. This is because FTP is more efficient
than {HTTP}, the protocol of the WWW. Many sites therefore
run both HTTP and FTP servers.
[Is FTP more efficient? How much more?]
Some well-known archive sites include Imperial College, UK
(ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/), UUNET, USA (ftp://ftp.uu.net/).
See also {archie}, {GNU archive site}, {mirror}.
(1998-07-02)