It is marginal if you want to transfer a file from time to time but if you are in a business where you transfer thousands to millions of files everyday it makes a big difference. FTP is still used because its interface is simple and well-known: good old file-directory paradigm that everybody knows. It is also used because it runs on every platform. I am in favour of having a new protocol but it should: - be faster than FTP (would have to use UDP instead of TCP here). - Firewall friendly. For that, you could use one port to do everything and forget about the data connection (Is it feasible with UDP as you would need to control the flow ?) - Being FTP compliant from the interface point of view. You should be able to replace your ftp client with your fastTP protocol and everything would run. - Add optional strong security. Possibility to encrypt or not the data stream and encrypt the password negotiation.

If we have this and it is marketed well then it could replace FTP.