FTP works and will be faster than WebDAV in many situations, but using FTP securely is a different ballgame — secure WebDAV, on the other hand, is just WebDAV over HTTPS rather than plain HTTP. As noted by Scott, HTTP is a much simpler protocol from behind NAT and firewalls, which is a bonus.
Personally, I’d avoid both and use either sftp or rsync-over-ssh wherever possible for file transfer (both of which will operate very securely, including public-key authentication, without causing problems with most firewalls, and can compress the data as it’s transferred; sftp is “the capabilities of FTP over the SSH protocol”, whereas rsync is good for transferring lots of files, some of which may or may not have changed, from one place to another, including to a remote server over a variety of protocols).
There is a reason the FTP has been around since the beginning, it works and it's fast. I have no idea RE: WebDisk and this is not meant to be a flame/troll, but file transfer utilities and protocols come and go and yet there is still FTP. Yes it's insecure (there are solutions to that) but for what it does it does it's job very very well. Just my $0.02 ($0.01 in a state with sales tax ;).
If you want a good solution to this post, I would use the free NULL FTP Server (it has WebDAV support if you pay for it) and run it as a SFTP server on port 22 (not FTP nor FTPS). Whoala! Single port, SSL secured WebDAV ftp! Amazing!
FTP works and will be faster than WebDAV in many situations, but using FTP securely is a different ballgame — secure WebDAV, on the other hand, is just WebDAV over HTTPS rather than plain HTTP. As noted by Scott, HTTP is a much simpler protocol from behind NAT and firewalls, which is a bonus.
Personally, I’d avoid both and use either
sftporrsync-over-sshwherever possible for file transfer (both of which will operate very securely, including public-key authentication, without causing problems with most firewalls, and can compress the data as it’s transferred;sftpis “the capabilities of FTP over the SSH protocol”, whereasrsyncis good for transferring lots of files, some of which may or may not have changed, from one place to another, including to a remote server over a variety of protocols).Since WebDisk (AKA WebDAV) is HTTP protocol based it will have more overhead than FTP transmissions. So FTP would be faster.
As far as what's better, I would go WebDav because:
There is a reason the FTP has been around since the beginning, it works and it's fast. I have no idea RE: WebDisk and this is not meant to be a flame/troll, but file transfer utilities and protocols come and go and yet there is still FTP. Yes it's insecure (there are solutions to that) but for what it does it does it's job very very well. Just my $0.02 ($0.01 in a state with sales tax ;).
If you want a good solution to this post, I would use the free NULL FTP Server (it has WebDAV support if you pay for it) and run it as a SFTP server on port 22 (not FTP nor FTPS). Whoala! Single port, SSL secured WebDAV ftp! Amazing!