FTP Is 40 Years Old

An anonymous reader writes "FTP celebrates its 40th birthday tomorrow. Originally launched as the RFC 114 specification, which was published on 16 April 1971, FTP is arguably even more important today than when it was born. Frank Kenney, vice president of global strategy for US managed file transfer company Ipswitch, said that the protocol we know as FTP today is 'a far cry from when Abhay Bushan, a student at MIT, wrote the original specifications for FTP.' According to Kenney, the standard has grown from 'a simple protocol to copy files over a TCP-based network [to] a sophisticated, integrated model that provides control, visibility, compliance and security in a variety of environments, including the cloud.'"

Comments

Oh please

[Anonymous Coward]

FTP is a hideous protocol. The client connects to the server with one TCP connection, and then when a file (or directory listing) is requested, the server opens up another TCP connection back to the client. This is a nightmare for firewalls. There is also passive mode where the client initiates the second connection to the server, but it is only slightly less hideous.

As awful as HTTP is, it is infinitely better than FTP. Sadly HTTP is mostly one way, but these days for anything that isn't being broadcast to the public (the web), you are betterm off using ssh/scp.

Let FTP die already.

Re:Oh please

[Mad Merlin]

no command line HTTP file transfer clients ever sprang up

Let me introduce you to wget and curl.

The cloud?

[socsoc]

Do we really need to bring buzzwords like the cloud into this? It's a file transfer protocol, aptly named, for transferring data to another system. It could be in a cloud or in a cave for all I care, as long as it has port 21 open.

Re:The cloud?

[mikkelm]

Of course we do. It's imperative in today's business environment to deploy file transfer protocols based on integrated models that work in the cloud with compliance. Just imagine what FTP was like before it had compliance in the cloud. I don't get how anyone got anything done.

Happy birthday FTP

[suso]

Now die!

Biased much?

[BitHive]

Asking the vice president of global strategy of a company built around its FTP client to comment on the relevance of FTP is a bit like asking an Adobe marketing executive about the importance of Flash, no?

Re:Kenny Should Learn History

[Rantastic]

Correction: FTP is only 3 years older than TCP. Still, it predates TCP and is really damn old.

Exactly one advantage to FTP - FXP

[Just Some Guy]

The only nonsucky thing about FTP is that you can use FXP to transfer files between two remote servers without piping it through your client. For example, suppose you have FTP logins on two servers and each has a nice, fast Internet connection. You are on dialup and need to copy database backups from one server to the other. You can use FTP to tell the first to upload to the second's IP address, and tell the second to recv a file from the first's IP address. Nothing but the status messages go through your poor local modem.

You can do the same with by ssh'ing to the first server and scp'ing a file from it to the second, but that requires generating keypairs and copying the public keys around. If you're nitpicky about having separate keypairs on each SSH client machines (and you really should be!), and you have 20 hosts, then you'd have to copy 19 public keys to each machine. With FTP+FXP, you need an FTP login on each of the hosts. That's especially nice if the sending server is a public repository where you don't have anything but anonymous FTP access.

This isn't exactly a killer feature for most people, but it's kind of slick if you ever actually need it.

Re:Nothing against FTP,

[LordLimecat]

SFTP has nothing to do with FTP, nor is it a wrapper. It is based on SSH, not FTP.

The three "generations" of FTP

[ftexperts]

Here's a little more background on the various generations of the FTP protocol.

First Generation (1971-1980)

The original specification for FTP (RFC 114) was published in 1971 by Abhay Bhushan of MIT. This standard introduced down many concepts and conventions that survive to this day including: ASCII vs. "binary" transfers, Username authentication (passwords were "elaborate" and "not suggested" at this stage) , "Retrieve", "Store", "Append", "Delete" and "Rename" commands, Partial and resumable file transfer , A protocol "designed to be extendable", Two separate channels: one for "control information", the other for "data", and Unresolved character translation and blocking factor issues

Second Generation (1980-1997)

The second generation of FTP (RFC 765) was rolled out in 1980 by Jon Postel of ITI. This standard retired RFC 114 and introduced more concepts and conventions that survive to this day, including: A formal architecture for separate client/server functions and two separate channels, Site-to-site transfers, Passive (a.k.a. "firewall friendly") transfer mode and The 3-digits-followed-by-text command response convention. ...and RFC 765 was replaced by RFC 959 (which formalized directory navigation) in 1985.

Third Generation (1997-current)

The third and current generation of FTP was a reaction to two technologies that RFC 959 did not address: SSL/TLS and IPv6.

Most FTP software now conforms to RFC 2228 for FTPS. Oddly enough, there are still a LOT of file transfer packages that still don't have IPv6 or EPSV support. The RFCs beyond IPv6 and EPSV support are pretty well baked, so if you're still dealing with a vendor without those attributes, consider that a big red flag.

Also keep an eye on draft-ietf-ftpext2-hash and draft-peterson-streamlined-ftp-command-extensions - that's where the action is in FTP today.