It is worth remembering that SMTP is, in most respects, simply FTP reworked. In many ways, HTTP is FTP badly reinvented.
But for a little extra SMTP handshaking at the start, there is no efficiency difference in transfer rate between SMTP and FTP. Probably the same is true for HTTP though I've not looked.
I think you missed the fact that sending files via SMTP is incredibly inefficient. Any files sent via SMTP have to be encoded which can balloon the transmission up 30%+. That is an incredible waste of bandwidth on a 10MB file. Also, remember that SMTP usually relays, so the message is bounced between 1-8 servers along the way (or more), more bandwidth and resources wasted. *sigh* -- Robert Blayzor IP Network Engineer, BOFH BiznessOnline.com, Inc. rblayzor@thebiz.net noc@thebiz.net http://www.thebiz.net/ FreeBSD, Putting the 'Operating' back into OS! -- http://www.freebsd.org/