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Asked: 2026-05-13T15:53:46+00:00

I’m designing a system that will need to move multi-GB backup images over TCP,

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I’m designing a system that will need to move multi-GB backup images over TCP, and I’m looking at REST as an alternative to ONC RPC.

For example, I might have

POST http://site/backups/image1

where image1 is an 50GB file whose data is contained in the HTTP body.

My question: is this within the scope of what REST is meant for? Is it inappropriate to move massive files over HTTP? My preliminary testing shows that the performance isn’t too bad, and I like the clean, debuggable protocol, as opposed to a custom ONC RPC server. But is this overloading the role of a webserver?

Thanks,
-Steve

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    HTTP has about the same overheads as FTP.

    An HTTP server if often asked to do more work than an FTP server. But otherwise, using HTTP to send a large file is about the same as using FTP.

    The only consideration is making sure your web server and web application framework are configured to do this kind of thing without needlessly expanding the entire 50Gb file inside Apache.

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