4 ms·

My experience is that when people say FTP a lot of the times they can mean SFTP.

by teej 9y ago

crispyambulance 9y ago
... or FTPS (which is different from SFTP) !
- laumars 9y ago
  Different but still worse than SFTP: FTPS suffers from all the same problems as FTP (lack of definitive standard for FTP commands nor their returns, poor client server relationship due to the data port being a callback, no standard for native compression, etc) bar the clear text problem* . But ironically the encryption then creates a new issue with clients behind NATing due to the aforementioned lack of client/server distinction. I don't think there is really much excuse not to run SFTP instead of FTP(S) given that most clients already support it. Or use one of the numerous other sharing / transfer protocols available to us now. * unless you misconfigure FTPS that is
  - mjevans 9y ago
    FTPS lets you (easily) use entirely virtual (custom to the FTPS server) users. SFTP requires the use 'real' users (maybe not with fancy daemon software or a headache of PAM rules).
    - laumars 9y ago
      ...or virtual machines, containers, or even just defining valid groups in sshd_config. There is a whole multitude of ways of separating out SFTP users, it's really not a hard job to do. Equally a lot of Linux FTP daemons defaults to using /etc/passwd users too. So What you're describing is a configuration detail the administrator needs to be aware of regardless of what transfer server they set up. In that regard FTP is no different from SFTP (or vise versa)
spydum 9y ago
you must not work in enterprise space. so much FTP, its sickening..
vbezhenar 9y ago
Windows shares in my experience.
jpmattia 9y ago
> My experience is that when people say FTP a lot of the times they can mean SFTP. It's worse than that: FTP has come to mean file transfer generically. Lots of users refer to Dropbox as "FTP".
- paulddraper 9y ago
  It THE "protocol for file transfer", yes? :)
- technion 9y ago
  Meanwhile, HPE refer to their own web based file upload software (for uploading memory dumps, logs etc) as "Dropbox".

My experience is that when people say FTP a lot of the times they can mean SFTP.

by teej 9y ago

My experience is that when people say FTP a lot of the times they can mean SFTP.

crispyambulance 9y ago

... or FTPS (which is different from SFTP) !

laumars 9y ago
Different but still worse than SFTP: FTPS suffers from all the same problems as FTP (lack of definitive standard for FTP commands nor their returns, poor client server relationship due to the data port being a callback, no standard for native compression, etc) bar the clear text problem* . But ironically the encryption then creates a new issue with clients behind NATing due to the aforementioned lack of client/server distinction. I don't think there is really much excuse not to run SFTP instead of FTP(S) given that most clients already support it. Or use one of the numerous other sharing / transfer protocols available to us now. * unless you misconfigure FTPS that is
- mjevans 9y ago
  FTPS lets you (easily) use entirely virtual (custom to the FTPS server) users. SFTP requires the use 'real' users (maybe not with fancy daemon software or a headache of PAM rules).
  - laumars 9y ago
    ...or virtual machines, containers, or even just defining valid groups in sshd_config. There is a whole multitude of ways of separating out SFTP users, it's really not a hard job to do. Equally a lot of Linux FTP daemons defaults to using /etc/passwd users too. So What you're describing is a configuration detail the administrator needs to be aware of regardless of what transfer server they set up. In that regard FTP is no different from SFTP (or vise versa)

spydum 9y ago

you must not work in enterprise space. so much FTP, its sickening..

vbezhenar 9y ago

Windows shares in my experience.

jpmattia 9y ago

> My experience is that when people say FTP a lot of the times they can mean SFTP. It's worse than that: FTP has come to mean file transfer generically. Lots of users refer to Dropbox as "FTP".

paulddraper 9y ago
It THE "protocol for file transfer", yes? :)
technion 9y ago
Meanwhile, HPE refer to their own web based file upload software (for uploading memory dumps, logs etc) as "Dropbox".