[COFF] Today I learned something new about File Transfer Protocol.

[Perry E. Metzger]

On Sat, 7 Jul 2018 23:17:43 -0600 Grant Taylor via COFF
<coff at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> Today I learned that File Transfer Protocol supports transferring
> data between two remote systems without passing the data through a 
> controlling host.

Not only does it permit that, but this mechanism was fascinatingly
abused a few times in the early 1990s as a means to enable security
policy violations. :)

> I also learned that FTP uses (a subset of) the Telnet protocol for
> it's control connection.  Yet another reason to dislike it.  (I
> strongly prefer 8-bit clean connections and dislike things that
> need special handling.)

In the old old days, FTP had all sorts of other functions, including
mail transfer. (SMTP obsoleted that by 1980 or so.)

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com