Difference Between Upload and Download

Difference between Upload and Download Introduction In computer networks, data is always transferred from one place to another in order to accomplish various tasks. This can be easily performed using Uploading and Downloading. These are the two processes which are used for transferring data between a client and a server. Uploading is the process of sending files including documents, pictures and videos from a client computer to a server. Downloading is the process of transferring files from the server to the client. Upload

Uploading means that sending files from our local system to another remote location such as a server, over the network. For an example, if we want to build a website, we should upload the required files, images and other content to the relevant server where we host the website. When considering the Internet, every time we send a request for a web page using a browser, the data containing our IP address and the web page we have requested, is uploaded to the server where the requested page is available. The time needed to upload depends on the size of the file we send.

Small text based files can be sent quicker than the larger music files, heavy video files, images or other large multimedia files. Most probably, uploading can be performed while doing other tasks on the computers. After uploading files to a server, it will be available for the other users, too. Download Downloading is transferring data or information from a server to our client computer. For example, the same files which have been uploaded to the server can be downloaded by another user to the hard disk of a local system.

When considering the Internet, in order to view the content of a requested web page on a browser of the user’s PC, the web page content including the images are downloaded first from the particular server. The time cost for downloading a file depends on the size of the file. When the file gets larger, the time takes to download the file also increases. As these files are downloaded to a personal computer, only the user of the machine can access those files. Compare and Contrast

Both Upload and Download are used to share the required data within a computer network. The primary difference between these two terms is that the direction of the data is being transferred. In uploading, the data is sent from our system to another remote system while in downloading, the data is received to our system from a remote system. So download is the reverse of the upload process. In uploading, there should be enough storage space in the server or other remote system to keep the uploading files.

In downloading, there should be enough free space in the hard disk of our personal computer to save the downloaded files. In uploading, the files may be accessed by all the users who have access to the server but in downloading, the files can be used by only the owner of the local system, who has the interest for those files. There are some risks in use of downloading because some files available for downloading may come from untrustworthy sites and so they can harm our computers. So we have to be careful when downloading from unknown sources.