In support of rsync, I point out that it is often much faster than
transferring complete files: I use it scores of times a day in
software testing to propagate changes from a master machine to test
machines.

In support of ftp, remember that http and https only provide
information about what the index.html (or whatever it is called
locally) file provides.

If that site intended to provide certain files, but neglected to add
them to the index.html file, then they are effectively invisible until
you can find out what URL refers to them.

That is very different from what I routinely do, and have done for
decades, with ftp.

Here is an example:

    % ncftp ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/
    ncftp /pub/pub/gnu/gcc > dir -tr
    -rw-r--r--    1 3003     65534      1860620 Sep 20  1992 gcc-1.42.tar.gz
    -rw-r--r--    1 3003     65534       856531 Nov 24  1992 gcc-vms-1.42.tar.gz
    -rw-r--r--    1 3003     65534       173366 Mar  8  1993 gnu-objc-issues-1.0.tar.gz
    -rw-r--r--    1 3003     65534       189664 Oct 29  1993 g++-2.5.0-testsuite.tar.gz
    ...
    drwxr-xr-x    2 3003     3003          4096 May 21  2024 gcc-13.3.0
    drwxr-xr-x    2 3003     3003          4096 Jun 24  2024 gcc-12.4.0
    drwxr-xr-x    2 3003     3003          4096 Jul 19  2024 gcc-11.5.0
    drwxr-xr-x    2 3003     3003          4096 Aug  1  2024 gcc-14.2.0

Notice that I can find out both the FILE SIZES, and the FILE
TIMESTAMPS, and I can see all of the files that are present. That is
impossible with http and https (yes, I know that a recursive wget
preserves them, but means that I have to fetch entire trees to find
out what they are), and I can find out quickly what is new at that
site, and that is of enormous importance to me.

Let's keep rsync and ftp universally available!

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- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                                                          -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe@???  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe@???  beebe@??? -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: https://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe -
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