Re: avoiding reinventing the wheel on file transfer.

[Albert-Lunde%northwestern.edu@localhost (Albert Lunde)]

> 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....

Speaking as one who has had a very minor role in the wu-ftpd
testing process the last year or two, there are a lot of
mis-features of FTP and/or FTP implementations that _deserve_
to be reinvented. What you describe would fix the firewall-unfriendly
pattern of TCP connections, but not other historical warts on the 
protocol.

If you could "profile" the FTP protocol, and throw out, say, half
the legacy features, and bless some recently drafted additions, you
might have something more plausible.

--
    Albert Lunde          Albert-Lunde%northwestern.edu@localhost (new address)
                          Albert-Lunde%nwu.edu@localhost (old address)