jamesmkrieger
commented
7 months ago I think most of our functionality should work as it tries FTP and then HTTP, but at some point we should probably clean these functions away to allow easier maintenance later
Dear all,
The FTP protocol for file downloads has been losing popularity over the years in favor of HTTP/S. There are many advantages of HTTP/S including speed, statelessness, security (HTTPS), and better support. Importantly during the past 2-3 years the main web browsers (Chrome and Firefox) have dropped support for the FTP protocol, which has effectively discontinued the FTP protocol for non-technical users.
Given that the majority of file download activity on the internet has moved to HTTP/S, wwPDB plans to deprecate FTP download protocol on November 1st 2024.
wwPDB has traditionally supported FTP, together with HTTP/S and RSYNC. Gradual deprecation of the FTP protocol, in favor of the HTTP/HTTPS protocol will be approached while maintaining support for the RSYNC protocol which offers additional functionality compared to the other 2 protocols.
As announced previously (http://www.wwpdb.org/news/news?year=2022#6303be3b707ecd4f63b3d3d9), we have introduced DNS names that are specific to the protocols:
Starting September 2023, wwPDB will start enforcing use of these updated DNS names for the preparation of FTP protocol deprecation.
Please contact info@wwpdb.org with any questions.
Kind regards,
Deborah Harrus
PDBe
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Deborah Harrus, Ph.D. Lead Annotator PDBe - Protein Data Bank in Europe
European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) European Molecular Biology Laboratory Wellcome Trust Genome Campus Hinxton Cambridge CB10 1SD UK