[Xitami] FTP problems

[Ewen McNeill]

In message <46235@dsl.co.uk>, Brian {Hamilton Kelly} writes:
>In message <200112280919.WAA09230@pagoda.in.naos.co.nz> Ewen McNeill writes:
>> There's plenty more.  But basically FTP was designed by a bunch of grad
>> students 20-something years ago making it up as they went along to solve
>> a much more general problem than was really required, in an environment
>> security and firewalls weren't an issue.  
>
>Apart from the more-firewall-friendly aspect, I feel that you are being
>more than a little unfair on both FTP and its implementors.
>(Particularly in referring to Jon Postel as a "grad student".)

Well he was a grad student :-)  (At least in the early 1980s when FTP
was first being invented; the later RFCs/standards simply consolidated
things somewhat.)

Some of the generality of FTP was useful once (such as translating from
old IBM mainframes to ASCII based systems and such like), but much of it
has outlived its usefulness.  That combined with the fact that FTP and
firewalls badly disagree with each other means that I'd be pretty happy
to see FTP go away for good.

Ewen

-- 
Ewen McNeill, Technical Consultant, iMatix Corporation  www.imatix.com