What's the difference between Cloud Computing and FTP Servers ?

[fab5freddy]

What's the difference between Cloud Computing and FTP Servers ??

I thought Cloud Computing was just an FTP Server ??

Am i getting something wrong ?

 

[miles01110]

I always considered Cloud computing to be more of a separation between users and data. In a cloud you usually interact with data through a web application or some sort of front-end. With FTP you're interacting directly with the data. I'm sure someone with a better example will set me straight though.

 

[fab5freddy]

thanks, but is there anyone else with a more straight forward explanation ?

 

[angelwatt]

Try Wikipedia's write-up.

 

[savar]

thanks, but is there anyone else with a more straight forward explanation ?

Cloud computing is kind of similar to the way electricity is delivered to your house. You probably don't own a generator, nor do you care where the electricity comes from, and you don't need 100% of the electricity 100% of the time. Cloud computing allows you to access large computational power on an as-needed basis. You use as much as you want, and you pay only for what you use. When you're done, that power is freed up for somebody else to use.

Imagine the opposite scenario: you have a program that needs lots of computing power. So you buy a whole bunch of servers, put them in racks, provide air conditioning, power supplies, etc. etc. It's a very large and complicated operation. Then you run your program, it finishes a little while later... and now you have this huge, expensive data center with nothing to do.

Cloud computing allows companies who specialize in large computational power to provide that as a service; it also frees up companies who do not have expertise in computing infrastructure to buy the computing power that they need.

 

[fab5freddy]

awesome! great explanation. So, FTP is for the dark ages!

 

[notjustjay]

awesome! great explanation. So, FTP is for the dark ages!

No.

FTP stands for "File Transfer Protocol", and is one of the communications protocols that computers use to send each other files over the Internet. Back before the days of the web (HTTP), FTP was the most popular way to transfer files. It is still in use today. Many people update web pages by writing the HTML code on their own computers, then transfer the files to the "live" servers via FTP.

To follow on to the electricity example, asking the difference between cloud computing and FTP is like asking the difference between the hydro grid and a toaster.

In a "cloud computing" paradigm, you could imagine computers that are basically terminals, with no hard drives.. all your files would be stored "in the cloud". One way you might access those files, should you need to save a copy onto, say, a USB stick, is to transfer them to a host machine via FTP.

 

[fab5freddy]

One problem i am experiencing with my FTP server
is incredibly slow transfer speeds....

I have shared hosting with 1 and 1, but i am trying to find out where
the bottleneck is..... I am on a fairly good connection on my end....