FTP is 40 years old | Hacker News Reader

FTP is 40 years old

bit-tech.net

26 pointspwg13 comments

And can't go away soon enough.

Not NAT friendy. Needs special workarounds on firewalls. Not IPv6 friendly. Sends everything in the clear. No compression support. Different binary and text transfer modes. All the "fixes" to it are hacks that cause interoperability issues.

FTP is the fax machine of the internet. People still use it, but anyone with a clue hates it.

It will eventually go away. Get hosting these days, such as cloud, they give you ftp over ssh and not traditional ftp (port 21). That's how it will fade.

I do love FTP though. But then again, I love holding a floppy in my hand too. It feels like you're holding real data.

SFTP is not FTP over SSH: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSH_File_Transfer_Protocol

FTP was merely the first demonstration of how defective and nearly useless a network connection becomes when subject to NAT. It was written for peers who are actually on the Internet; nobody expected users to consent to being treated as lower forms of life.

It is not just NATing that breaks FTP but any form of firewall in general. Iptables isn't bad because there are special kernel modules that watch ftp traffic and auto adjust rules for you.

But good luck if your firewall is not on the same box as your FTP server.

I cannot agree with you more. I have 2 vendors that use FTP or FTP over SSH (not sftp) to upload data to our site. It is a firewall nightmare. Never mind the outbound ftp.

Not to mention that it's most likely slower than the identical HTTP file transfer.

Comparing its security to P2P seems odd. Last time I checked FTP used plain-text passwords :-/

FTP is an abomination and SMTP is not a file transfer protocol. I wish people would use SFTP.

The biggest problem is I've yet to find a SFTP server that isn't part of a SSH service. I'd like a nice pure SFTP server.

SFTP is SSH based - the full name is "SSH File Transfer Protocol" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSH_File_Transfer_Protocol

You can restrict an account to only SCP/SFTP with this shell: http://www.pizzashack.org/rssh/

Yes I'm well aware that sftp is a ftp style protocol over ssh.

What I want is a SFTP server that focuses on just the ftp part. With easy chrooting, virtual users, that sort of stuff.

I recently setup a new ftp/sftp server. Chrooting SFTP is a pain in the ass. Chrooting SFTP while still allowing some accounts to also be chrooted FTP is an even bigger pain in the ass.

In addition from everything I hear your better off using sftp-subsystem over rssh.

ProFTPd has a sftp module that works very well.

Sadly ProFTPd also has a very bad security track-record, don't use it for a public ftp.

  Frank Kenney, vice president of global strategy for US managed file 
  transfer company Ipswitch, told us 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.’

And how is a PR quote from a stuffed shirt at all relevant to the story? Who is this chump? Why are they pulling asinine quotes from him?

  You can find Ipswitch at stand H70 of the Infosecurity Europe 2011 
  show in Earl’s Court, London from 19 to 21 April.

Ah.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com