[ih] First file transfer on ARPANET

[Wayne Hathaway]

> I'm curious about when the first file transfer was done successfully on 
> ARPANET. Given that the initial focus was remote login, I'm guessing 
> that rudimentary file transfers wouldn't have been done until sometime 
> in 1970. Does anyone remember?

I did one of the first non-Tenex FTP servers (for the IBM TSS/360
system at NASA Ames Research Center), and then I wrote an RFC
about the experience to help other implementors and to help fine-
tune the FTP spec.

Aside: This might also be relevant to Miles Fidelman's question
about early RFC's.  I really did want others to comment on the
implementation choices that I had made, as well as on some aspects
of the FTP spec that made such choices particularly troublesome.
I wasn't really proposing anything, merely sharing what I had gone
through to turn a draft spec into running code, plus making a few
comments of my own on the early FTP spec.

My RFC was number 418 and it came out in November of 1972, so I
would have done my first transfers in early-to-mid 1972.

Wayne Hathaway
wayne at playaholic.com, formerly wayne at ames-67   :-)