Upload & Download - definition

You have it backwards. Download is to you and upload is away from you.

http://tinyurl.com/2tqko - Download

http://tinyurl.com/3fvh3 - Upload

Switch the definitions around,upload means to send data away and download brings data into computer.
EX.You would upload a file to a ftp server to be shared.

Hmmm... In the early days of networking these words meant something else. To downline load (the phrase has lost a syllable over the years) was to transfer something from the central computer to a server or workstation, and upline loading was the other direction.

Later as peer-to-peer transfer became more common, the words acquired a connotation of respect. The person or device who requested the data transfer was considered to be "downline" from the person or device who had it, but that could be overridden by social or organizational relationships. If your boss asked you for a document, you uploaded it to him. This got pretty confusing.

The current definitions are better. You don't have to know who has the larger computer or the loftier title. "Down" means toward the speaker, "up" means away from him. The same transaction can be called both an "upload" and a "download" depending on who's describing it, but that's no more confusing than figuring out who someone is talking about when he says "me."

I suppose if you're talking about two people who are not part of the conversation exchanging data, the definition breaks down, but it doesn't seem to cause any problems. Is Suzie downloading or uploading data from her PC to John's?

My understanding is based upon current internet based experience. The way I visualize these terms is to imagine the internet as an amorphous cloud just above all of our CPUs. I imagine LANs and WANs in much the same way, even though it is far easier to see the connections and switches. . Thus anything moving from a user's computer (my CPUs are usually on the floor or at least below my waist level) to a network server has been *uploaded*.
So,if I want to share a paper on my network, I upload it onto the network where users can then
There a user can access that object. If they then save it to their own CPU they are now moving the document from the network down to themselves.

In many ways distributed computing has taken us back to the imagery of the mainframe days. Information is _seen_ as centralized, even if it actually resides on several different servers. If users access all of it through the same view, they experience it as centralized information.
When I visualize grid, matrix and P2P networks one can see that amorphous cloud as you trace the bits and bytes running between them.

That is the more poetic answer :)
Below is excerpted what I found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upload

The person/computer sending the information refers to the transfer as an upload, while the person/computer receiving the information refers to it as a download.

These are the definitions used by ISPs.
...
In either case, information is transferred both ways to manage the download. This is often the reason people get confused.

The act of transferring a file from one web server to another, while technically a simultaneous download and upload, is often called sideloading.

Upload means sending the data from local computer to a remote computer
Download means getting the information available on the remote computer to a local computer

There seems to be conflict. When not referring to the internet down usually means to send from.

There seems to be conflict. When not referring to the internet down usually means to send from.

I have been involved with process automation for 20 years now. Ever since then there has been a massive misunderstanding to the meaning of UPLOAD and DOWNLOAD. To put it simply, to UPLOAD is the transfer of data from a smaller memory capacity to a larger memory capacity. DOWNLOAD, is the transfer of data from a larger memory capacity to a smaller memory capacity. When you send data to a process controller, it is a DOWNLOAD, because the controller has a smaller memory than the computer you are downloading from. The same holds true with the internet. Your computer could not possibly hold as much data as the internet. So when you receive data from the internet, it is called DOWNLOAD. These terms were made by the people who invented the process. Yet, most digital cameras, for example have it backwards. The incorrect terminology causes great confusion, especially when the software says that you are downloading when you are actually uploading. I have found that many camcorder manufacturers get it correct. I don?t know what can be done about it. I tend to not buy products that have it backwords.