Which is the smarter git protocol, ssh or git(over ssh) or https protocol?

Question

Which is efficient? SSH:// or Git:// (File compression)

I understand in Git, git protocol is smart because there is a protocol agent on both ends of communication t

Answer 1

A quick search of the pack files during a git clone will list a single pack file that is sent from the server to the client. The pack file is listed under .git/objects/pack/pack-XXXX.pack. The files to be sent from the server to the client are first packed, compressed. Then there is a single copy of the packed contents. This can be seen when comparing the packed files using lsof -p on the server side and lsof -p on the client side. In the sample case a 200MB files is uploaded from the server to the client....

1) Server side 
   lsof -p 8079 | grep pack
   git-uploa 8079  REG  253,2 277896169 5140075 /home/server/work/work0617/.git/objects/pack/pack-492945ae602a975d46df133f6ded9642146fb6a7.pack
   git-uploa 8079  REG  253,2   1703472 5140076 /home/server/work/work0617/.git/objects/pack/pack-492945ae602a975d46df133f6ded9642146fb6a7.idx
   git-uploa 8079  REG  253,2 277896169 5140075 /home/server/work/work0617/.git/objects/pack/pack-492945ae602a975d46df133f6ded9642146fb6a7.pack

2) Client side
   lsof -p 3140 | grep pack
   git     3140  3u   REG    8,1 101031935 3681610 /home/client/work/work0617/work0617/.git/objects/pack/tmp_pack_pRfYPa

 3) The server side pack file 277MB. The file on the client side is 101MB and growing. So a single compressed file is copied over.