5 ms·

Exactly. You can offload HTTP to anyone, an HTTP proxy is absolutely trivial to set up, and an HTTP cache is even easier. FTP is not nearly as trivial, plus it

Exactly. You can offload HTTP to anyone, an HTTP proxy is absolutely trivial to set up, and an HTTP cache is even easier. FTP is not nearly as trivial, plus it's a stupid, broken protocol that deserves to die. The whole thing is a giant bag of hurt.

mschuster91 10y ago
> FTP is not nearly as trivial, plus it's a stupid, broken protocol that deserves to die. I agree with you, but FTP has one very valid use case left: easy file sharing, especially for shared hosting. FTP clients are native to every popular OS, from Android to Windows (only exceptions I know are Win Mobile and iOS), and there's a lot of ecosystem built around FTP. There is SCP and SFTP but they don't really have any kind of widespread usage in the non-professional world.
- astrodust 10y ago
  > [Has] one very valid use case left: easy file sharing, especially for shared hosting. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not easy. Not secure. Not user friendly. Not anything good. Have an iPhone and need to FTP something? Don't have installation rights on your Windows workstation and need to FTP something? Unpleasant if not confusing as all hell. Dropbox or a Dropbox-like program is significantly easier to get people on board with. Any "ecosystem" built around FTP is rotten to the core. Blow it up and get rid of it as soon as you can. Some vendors insist on using FTP because reasons, but those reasons are always laziness. I can't be the only one that would prefer they use ssh/scp/rsync with actual keys so I can be certain the entity uploading a file is actually them and not some random dude who sniffed the plain-text password off the wire.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    Huh? Windows explorer has FTP built into the shell. As does every other desktop OS. If you care about file integrity, you want to out of band to verify the signatures on the binary anyway. Dropbox is blocked in most commercial networks and offers no assurance of anything.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      Yes, I'm sure walking your accounting department through how to use the command-line FTP tool in Windows is going to work out fantastically well. Versus drag and drop file to this page. There you go. It's uploading. That's why I said Dropbox or a Dropbox-like service, of which there are hundreds. Microsoft SharePoint is but one example.
      - sp332 10y ago
        Not that shell. The UI shell. Explorer. You can browse FTP sites just like network file systems, including drag and drop.
      - Spooky23 10y ago
        Go to Start->Run. Type ftp://ftp-site/path/to/file. Drag and drop to your hearts content.
        JBReefer 10y ago
        When I worked ftp (with accounting departments ironically), the advice was not to do that because the client often corrupted files.
- derefr 10y ago
  The protocol you want is SMB. Windows has first-class support (obviously); but Samba gives Linux and BSD support that, in modern Desktop Environments, is exactly as good. Mobile devices don't tend to have OS-level support for it, but there are very good libraries to enable individual apps to speak the protocols (look at VLC's mobile apps.) Even Apple has given up on their own file-sharing protocol (AFP) in favor of macOS machines just speaking SMB to one-another. Yes, it's not workable over the public Internet. Neither is FTP, any more. If you've got a server somewhere far away, and want all your devices to put files on it, you're presumably versed with configuring servers, so go ahead and set up a WebDAV server on that box. Everything speaks that.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    > Mobile devices don't tend to have OS-level support for it... Yeah, nope. Dead out of the gate. Thanks for playing.
    - derefr 10y ago
      Mobile devices don't tend to have OS-level support for anything, though. The GP comment: > FTP clients are native to every popular OS, from Android to Windows (only exceptions I know are Win Mobile and iOS) To rephrase: only 1/3 of mobile OSes support FTP.
      - ReverseCold 10y ago
        No one uses Windows mobile, that comment was hardly fair. Pretty sure Android is 80%+ share.
      - astrodust 10y ago
        Anything web-based works fine on the phone. FTP and SMB do not. Not working on iOS is like saying "Oh, this road doesn't work with German made cars. That's not a big deal, is it?"
        derefr 10y ago
Qantourisc 10y ago
Why is the protocol broken ? Is there something that doesn't work ? Perhaps you mean to say complicated protocol ill-fit for modern times ?
- terryf 10y ago
  Have you looked at the spec? If you do, then you'll understand. Imagine a file transfer protocol that defines the command to list files in a folder, but does not specify the format of the response other that it should be human-readable. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc959.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc959.txt LIST and NLST commands for example. No way to get a standard list of files with sizes and modification dates. yay! Oh, and the data connection that is made from the server to the client. That works wonders with firewalls of today. It was an ok spec when it was invented, but today it's very painful to operate.
- pikzen 10y ago
  http://mywiki.wooledge.org/FtpMustDie http://mywiki.wooledge.org/FtpMustDie

mschuster91 10y ago

> FTP is not nearly as trivial, plus it's a stupid, broken protocol that deserves to die. I agree with you, but FTP has one very valid use case left: easy file sharing, especially for shared hosting. FTP clients are native to every popular OS, from Android to Windows (only exceptions I know are Win Mobile and iOS), and there's a lot of ecosystem built around FTP. There is SCP and SFTP but they don't really have any kind of widespread usage in the non-professional world.

astrodust 10y ago
> [Has] one very valid use case left: easy file sharing, especially for shared hosting. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not easy. Not secure. Not user friendly. Not anything good. Have an iPhone and need to FTP something? Don't have installation rights on your Windows workstation and need to FTP something? Unpleasant if not confusing as all hell. Dropbox or a Dropbox-like program is significantly easier to get people on board with. Any "ecosystem" built around FTP is rotten to the core. Blow it up and get rid of it as soon as you can. Some vendors insist on using FTP because reasons, but those reasons are always laziness. I can't be the only one that would prefer they use ssh/scp/rsync with actual keys so I can be certain the entity uploading a file is actually them and not some random dude who sniffed the plain-text password off the wire.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Huh? Windows explorer has FTP built into the shell. As does every other desktop OS. If you care about file integrity, you want to out of band to verify the signatures on the binary anyway. Dropbox is blocked in most commercial networks and offers no assurance of anything.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    Yes, I'm sure walking your accounting department through how to use the command-line FTP tool in Windows is going to work out fantastically well. Versus drag and drop file to this page. There you go. It's uploading. That's why I said Dropbox or a Dropbox-like service, of which there are hundreds. Microsoft SharePoint is but one example.
    - sp332 10y ago
      Not that shell. The UI shell. Explorer. You can browse FTP sites just like network file systems, including drag and drop.
    - Spooky23 10y ago
      Go to Start->Run. Type ftp://ftp-site/path/to/file. Drag and drop to your hearts content.
      - JBReefer 10y ago
        When I worked ftp (with accounting departments ironically), the advice was not to do that because the client often corrupted files.
derefr 10y ago
The protocol you want is SMB. Windows has first-class support (obviously); but Samba gives Linux and BSD support that, in modern Desktop Environments, is exactly as good. Mobile devices don't tend to have OS-level support for it, but there are very good libraries to enable individual apps to speak the protocols (look at VLC's mobile apps.) Even Apple has given up on their own file-sharing protocol (AFP) in favor of macOS machines just speaking SMB to one-another. Yes, it's not workable over the public Internet. Neither is FTP, any more. If you've got a server somewhere far away, and want all your devices to put files on it, you're presumably versed with configuring servers, so go ahead and set up a WebDAV server on that box. Everything speaks that.
- astrodust 10y ago
  > Mobile devices don't tend to have OS-level support for it... Yeah, nope. Dead out of the gate. Thanks for playing.
  - derefr 10y ago
    Mobile devices don't tend to have OS-level support for anything, though. The GP comment: > FTP clients are native to every popular OS, from Android to Windows (only exceptions I know are Win Mobile and iOS) To rephrase: only 1/3 of mobile OSes support FTP.
    - ReverseCold 10y ago
      No one uses Windows mobile, that comment was hardly fair. Pretty sure Android is 80%+ share.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      Anything web-based works fine on the phone. FTP and SMB do not. Not working on iOS is like saying "Oh, this road doesn't work with German made cars. That's not a big deal, is it?"
      - derefr 10y ago

Qantourisc 10y ago

Why is the protocol broken ? Is there something that doesn't work ? Perhaps you mean to say complicated protocol ill-fit for modern times ?

terryf 10y ago
Have you looked at the spec? If you do, then you'll understand. Imagine a file transfer protocol that defines the command to list files in a folder, but does not specify the format of the response other that it should be human-readable. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc959.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc959.txt LIST and NLST commands for example. No way to get a standard list of files with sizes and modification dates. yay! Oh, and the data connection that is made from the server to the client. That works wonders with firewalls of today. It was an ok spec when it was invented, but today it's very painful to operate.
pikzen 10y ago
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/FtpMustDie http://mywiki.wooledge.org/FtpMustDie