[ih] FTP RIP

[Toerless Eckert]

On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 10:22:15PM -0400, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> The control connection was a Telnet connection and assumed to be ASCII. The purpose was so that commands did not get blocked behind data. Also, for TIPS, the user FTP process was you. You typed the commands.

Indeed. I remember doing this. Especially given how FTP supports third party transfers where
an operator on host A can initiate ftp transfers directly between hosts B and C. Forgot the
CLI commands though...

Pretty fundamental functionality that AFAIK are missing from other protocols after FTP.

I have not followed later development of secure ftp options, but i would be (positively) surprised
if there where cryptographic variants whereby you could set up a cryptographic B<->C connection
only using A's credentials on B and A's credentials on C.

Oh well, silly, but good business to physically set up a lot of distributed management servers
to orchestrate and pinhole traffic between remote B and C via HTTPs, when a NOCs A is on the other
side of the planet. Nobody even thinks about how better protocols could solve those problems better.

Cheers
    Toerless

> The data connection was normally a fixed offset from the Telnet connection. (NCP sockets were simplex, so there was one for each direction.) The data connection was not ASCII. The data connection was assumed to be binary.  The only time the Control connection was used for data transfer was for the MAIL command as opposed to the MLFL command that used the data connection.  For the TIPs, devices like a printer or card reader could be ???hardwired??? to a given socket. The SOCKet command was used to not use the default data connections.
>  
> > 
> > Firewalling and NATing are two of FTP's Achilles Heals.  Specifically FTPS.
> 
> Isn???t that a bit backwards? Since FTP was done decades before either one.
> > 
> > Aside SFTP (SSH) is significantly different than FTPS (FTP over SSL / TLS).
> 
> Unlike HTTP, FTP required a login. FTP is, in a sense, the first application protocol. (Telnet and NCP were ???in the OS.??? Telnet was a terminal device driver protocol.)
> > 
> >> It???s been unfortunate how many of FTP???s features had to be (or still remain to be) reinvented in HTTP.
> > 
> > I learned in the last few years that it's possible to establish FTP connections with two servers and instruct them to exchange data directly between themselves without traversing the common client.  Or at least the protocol supports it.  I'm not aware of it being a common implementation, much less execution.  --  I do think that FTPS may hinder this somewhat.
> 
> That has been there since at least 1973. There are no special commands and nothing special for doing that. It is just using the existing commands to do it.
> 
> Take care,
> John
> 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > Grant. . . .
> > unix || die
> > 
> > -- 
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> 
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---
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