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FTP is 50 years old

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Re: FTP is 50 years old

#131

Post by js2 »

alexhutcheson wrote: post #49
js2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my college comp-sci networking class, one of our projects was to figure out a system for sending messages visually between two parties spaced 100 yards (91 meters) apart as quickly as possible. Each team of four came up with their own signaling method, trying to balance how many bits were transmitted with each symbol with how quickly we could encode/decode the message. Binoculars were not allowed. We were outside,…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_semaphore would have been good if you needed to send arbitrary text. Naval flags would be higher bandwidth if you could pre-arrange a modest-sized dictionary of the words and phrases you’d need. https://www.navalgazing.net/Signalling-Part-1 is a good read.

It’s been over two decades but I think the requirement may have been an arbitrary bitstream but if not that, it was likely any of the visible ASCII characters.

Re: FTP is 50 years old

#132

Post by mtone »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #126
mtone wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still use it to sync folders to my iPad (from Documents Readdle). Since walled gardens don't leave much options open, it's basically either that or a cloud provider -- and no free cloud plan has enough space to store these folders. So FTP wins easily this one. It's free with unlimited storage, always has been, always will be.

Is that FTP, or SFTP? Despite the similar name they have almost nothing in common.

I just use FTP.

Re: FTP is 50 years old

#133

Post by smoe »

kypro wrote: post #73

Not that I think we should go back, but I do miss the wildwest days of web development when it was still acceptable to FTP untested code straight to production. For my first dev job we would develop on production using an FTP client to push up changes on save. One day I was writing an SQL UPDATE statement and I forgot to include a WHERE clause. I basically nuked the entire product DB and it took days to recover becau…

The backend team in one of my previous jobs (around 2010) had an interesting file locking mechanism.

All the developer were sat around one table but you couldn’t see each other behind the dual screens. So every hour or so, somebody stood up to inform the team that he is going to be editing file xyz, so please don’t touch.

It wasn’t production though, everyone was just working on a shared staging system.

Re: FTP is 50 years old

#134

Post by rectang »

dominiek wrote: post #39

Amazing. I never thought I would say this, but I actually implemented an FTP server in 2020. This was needed to support firmware updates to specific hardware (Electric Vehicle charging stations). Apparently embedded software developers choose FTP whenever a spec doesn't specify how binary file transfers should work. It was kind of amusing getting FTP to work in a modern cloud environment. I run a single Kubernetes po…

How much better have we gotten at specifying protocols? Have we learned how to make protocols less ambiguous and less susceptible to crazy edge cases which make it burdensome to implement support in practice once there are lots of sloppy implementations in the field?

Re: FTP is 50 years old

#136

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

dominiek wrote: post #39

Amazing. I never thought I would say this, but I actually implemented an FTP server in 2020. This was needed to support firmware updates to specific hardware (Electric Vehicle charging stations). Apparently embedded software developers choose FTP whenever a spec doesn't specify how binary file transfers should work. It was kind of amusing getting FTP to work in a modern cloud environment. I run a single Kubernetes po…

Will Kubernetes or Node.js make it to 50.

Re: FTP is 50 years old

#137

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

chasil wrote: post #51
gogopuppygogo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m just glad they used ftp over tftp. Maybe someday they’ll use FTPS but I have my doubts it’ll ever catch on with the popularity of SFTP.

These standards are so very different, and they don't scale well. TFTP is actually over UDP, guarantees only one data packet on the wire at any one time (no sliding window), does not support listing a remote directory, and is extreme in simplicity. FTPS has such arbitrary controls for TLS optional versus required status over control and data channels that it is easy to misconfigure. SFTP lacks two key features (amids…

>SFTP lacks two key features (amidst jump host and other scope creep frenzy), anonymous mode and URL support in a browser.

You forgot the abysmal performance compared to FTPS due to the SSH flow control conflicting with the underlying TCP flow control.

Re: FTP is 50 years old

#139

Post by blabitty »

formercoder wrote: post #77
kypro wrote: post #73

Not that I think we should go back, but I do miss the wildwest days of web development when it was still acceptable to FTP untested code straight to production. For my first dev job we would develop on production using an FTP client to push up changes on save. One day I was writing an SQL UPDATE statement and I forgot to include a WHERE clause. I basically nuked the entire product DB and it took days to recover becau…

Don’t worry, SFTP is the backbone of the US financial system.

Preach. I was setting up SFTP batch jobs for financial data last year. New jobs, not migrations.
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