Do you mean Linux or application installation?

All three protocols are about file download/sharing (especially FTP and NFS) although there are some differences:

- HTTP is the protocol used by your web browser, and it's around you everywhere. This is the transport layer for the webpages you view and the files you download from different websites. Advantages: your firewall is most likely let's this kind of traffic flow without restrictions. Disadvantage: is slower by design, also needs reconnection whenever accessing a new file (stateless protocol)

- FTP (File Transfer Protocol): offers a higher speed when downloading content, it does not need to reconnect for every file (it's a stateful protocol, it maintains the connection), however you may need special treatment in case of an enterprise firewall and you need an FTP capable client (today almost all webbrowsers and file browsers have this function).

- NFS (Network File System): offers the highest throughput, but it's designed for local network usage (not for the Internet) and you can access it from Windows only by installing a special package (SFU). Similar in function to the windows file sharing (NetBIOS, SMB), but much better in speed.

These kind of installation at least requires you already know differences between these protocols. Tamas reply is the best one but to focus on your specific question I'd like to add these notes related to installation notes only:

NFS - Use it in local environment when you've a local NFS server with installation files from your preferred distro. In this case you already have requested files in local and you just need to add another Linux machine to your environment. You've probably have a situation like this if you've a Linux farm and you just want to be quick when installing new machines

HTTP - Typical network installation, you're installing a new Linux machine and you'd like to start with some sort of "network minimal installer iso", you just put an ISO like this and start with remote fetching files from external repository or mirrors (from Canonical, Debian, CentOS, ...). Easy and pretty straightforward, nice to have if you just want an up to date distro.

FTP - Basically read Tamas info, from an installation point of view is basically the same. Reliable when dealing with big files due to its nature, FTP is born for transferring files.