Online Computer Terms Dictionary - A

archive site

<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, UUNET, USA.

See also archie, GNU archive site, mirror.

(1998-07-02)