Re: avoiding reinventing the wheel on file transfer.

[David Terrell <dbt%meat.net@localhost>]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 07:27:10PM -0500, Bill Sommerfeld wrote:
> So, I have this concern that we're going to spend a whole lot of time
> on the file transfer draft, and in the process reinvent a couple
> wheels which have already been built.
> 
> Here's a half-formed suggestion for the working group...
> 
> file transfer involves a bunch of really ugly issues (newline
> conventions, binary/ascii/... modes, i18n of filenames, etc., etc.).
> Many of these problems have already been tackled by FTP.
> 
> A radically different and simpler approach (from a standards-writing
> viewpoint, at least) may well be to define a way to tunnel "normal"
> ftp through a collection of ssh channels, so we can avoid refighting
> all the battles which were fought over FTP... i.e., you start off with
> one channel for the FTP control channel, and then open up new ssh
> channels where "normal" FTP would open a new TCP connection....

As a point of reference, I believe SecureFX from vandyke does
exactly this by using creative PORT commands and dynamic remote 
port forwarding against an existing FTP daemon on the sshd host.

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