> FTP may look crufty today but it was an excellent protocol for its time, and offers capabilities you can't really get with any other current protocol. This i

> FTP may look crufty today but it was an excellent protocol for its time, and offers capabilities you can't really get with any other current protocol. This is some weird astroturfing of the FTP protocol's goodwill, but it was never particularly good. Even for its time it's a curiously conceited protocol that is remarkably complicated without doing very much that a similarly intelligent RMI-style interface couldn't have worked with. And in practice, many FTP clients basically left the control channel concept behind and began to use it as if it were streamed RMI, opening up multiple connections for transfers to help users deal with even 1980's network environments. It stands out as complicated for its time.