39 ms·
FTP is 50 years old
- zabzonk 6y ago> Jimmy Hendrix died 6 months ago Pedantry: It's "Jimi".
- jedimastert 6y agoI wouldn't call it pedantry, it's the guy's name
- goda90 6y agoWhat's the oldest protocol that's still regularly used?
- zabzonk 6y agoXON/XOFF?
- alex_anglin 6y agoSnail-mail ain't dead yet.
- moron4hire 6y agoI believe Semaphore predates it
- selfhoster11 6y agoHow so? Mail couriers are surely much older than semaphore systems of any kind.
- KozmoNau7 6y agoThat depends on how you define "protocol". ASCII dates from 1963, and that's still the baseline for text-based protocols. FTP predates Ethernet, Token Ring and ARCNET. It predates TCP/IP. For an actual protocol, and not just a simple format specification like ASCII, it doesn't get older than that in current use.
- 77pt77 6y agoMorse would be older.
- crazypython 6y agoASCII is a very obvious format. If you take the english alphabet and symbols, it fits almost perfectly in the first 7 bits. In 5th grade I tried encoding English in binary, and noticed how I accidentally reinvented ASCII.
- vagrantJin 6y agoEncode English in Binary in 5th grade? You must be a smart cookie. In 5th grade, I had the attention span of a fruit fly. Probably would have tried drawing phalluses in ascii if I had known about it.
- 0x0 6y agoI wouldn't say it's obvious. There's some careful decisions in the design that might not be obvious at first sight, such as having upper and lowercase characters be the same save for a single bit.
- unilynx 6y agoOr the numbers 0 to 9 at 48 to 57 (ie just mask out bits 4 and 5)
- crazypython 6y agoI see. I would retract my statement if HN let me edit.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoRetract it at the bottom where it is least likely to be seen like we do in modern papers/news sites.
- pavlov 6y agoIBM z/OS (né OS/360) is 57 years old and still actively developed, so maybe something used there?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- coldpie 6y agoInteresting question and I guess it depends what you mean by "protocol"[1]. If simple characters-over-the-wire counts, then ASCII was developed throughout 60s and was itself derived from much older telegraph standards. Teletype is arguably more of a "protocol" and is actually even older, going back to the 50s, and arguably the 30s in some form, and still forms the basis of all terminal computing today including (especially) across networks. [1] Sometimes it seems like every interesting discussion boils down to definitions, doesn't it?
- ajb 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
- jswrenn 6y agoHa, I was like "REALLY!?!?" before actually clicking the link. I was thinking of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth_Single_Sign-on_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth_Single_Sign-on_arch... ...which is an unlikely contender for oldest protocol!
- ajb 6y agoYou can consider it a successor protocol :-)
- tpmx 6y agoPerhaps the oldest protocol for automated (in terms of encoding/decoding) text communication that's still being regularly used? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code#ITA2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code#ITA2 > In 1924, the CCITT introduced the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2) code[14] as an international standard, which was based on the Western Union code with some minor changes. > ITA2 is still used in telecommunications devices for the deaf (TDD), Telex, and some amateur radio applications, such as radioteletype ("RTTY"). It's interesting that the fundamentals of this were invented in 1870s. Who needs semiconductors when you have gears and levers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile_Baudot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile_Baudot
- peter303 6y agoBritish naval signal and letter flags codified 1817. Morse code from 1840s. Ham radio still uses it when signal took weak fir voice. Proficiency was required for a ham license until 2006.
- CydeWeys 6y agoMorse may not be the oldest but my bet is on it being by far the most widely still used of anything nearly two centuries old. I got into ham radio a decade ago and learned Morse (poorly) just because. It already wasn't a requirement, but so many still use it.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoHopefully there's an app for listening to it and interpreting it? I bet those old timers get pretty fast with the Morse
- js2 6y agoIn 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, so we didn't know how windy it would be. I seem to recall on my team, we were sending two bits per symbol. I think it was just a large cardboard box, we colored each of the four flaps visually distinct, then unfolded one of the flaps for each symbol. I don't recall a single team thinking to re-purpose naval flags. Duh.
- Joker_vD 6y agoThere is also flag semaphore which is very fast and very recognizable and gives you about 5 bits per signal.
- alexhutcheson 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_semaphore 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 https://www.navalgazing.net/Signalling-Part-1 is a good read.
- h2odragon 6y ago100V DC T1 lines still exist, I'm told
- tyingq 6y agoIf we're limiting it to "used by computers", and "actually used in some meaningful non-hobby volume" maybe the T1/DS1 TDMA protocol? That dates back to 1962. Or maybe morse code counts as a protocol?, Still around in VOR (VHF omnidirectional range) and NDB (Non-directional beacon) in the aviation world.
- axiolite 6y agoRS-232 (1960) is still going strong.
- rsync 6y ago"What's the oldest protocol that's still regularly used?" People are answering with old telephone codes and British naval signals, etc. You should be thinking: - The muslim call to prayers. - The affirmation of faith, as it is spoken in mass or (protestant) church ... or the first and second readings, followed by a Gospel reading. - The Jewish rite of circumcision (which is, among other things, almost certainly a signaling mechanism).
- tpmx 6y agoIf we're abandoning automation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_(diplomacy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_(diplomacy) > The term protocol is derived, via French and Medieval Latin, from the Greek word πρωτόκολλον protokollon "first glued sheet of or onto a papyrus-roll". > The rules of protocol to create space where meetings can take place. https://www.protocol.dubai.ae/About/Protocol-History https://www.protocol.dubai.ae/About/Protocol-History > The diplomatic relations that existed between Egypt and Babel, which started in 1450 B.C., included highlights on the application of standards for Protocol and Etiquette that were related to both diplomatic immunities as well as receptions and ceremonies.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoI would hate to be involved with any generic means of communication that required circumcisions to impart information. That sounds like a rather gory way to tell my wife I'll be late for dinner.
- Talanes 6y agoBut it was a great way to tell your wife not to make pork for dinner. At least until it caught on beyond the intended market.
- fanf2 6y agoDTMF “touch tone” telephone dialling dates from 1963
- ajb 6y agoFrom rfc801 (transition from NCP to TCP/IP) : "FTP: This is specified in RFC 765. It is very similar to the FTP used with the NCP. The primary differences are that in addition to the changes for Telnet, that the data channel is limited to 8-bit bytes so FTP features to use other transmission byte sizes are eliminated." So FTP is older than the standardisation of byte size :-)
- mywittyname 6y agoI feel like 7-bit mode stuck around for a while. I remember seeing the option in modern FTP clients.
- gnfargbl 6y agoI believe that option was more to do with transparently converting between DOS and Unix line terminators. I definitely recall several ruined 2400bps modem downloads in the mid-nineties, because I'd failed to issue a TYPE I command.
- jandrese 6y agoNot so surprising when you consider it was developed in the era of 36 bit word machines.
- jbverschoor 6y agoI thought a byte ment “by eight” What’s a nibble of a byte is 8bits
- okl 6y agoWikipedia has some info (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#History_of_the_conflicting_definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#History_of_the_conflictin...): "The size of the byte has historically been hardware-dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. Sizes from 1 to 48 bits have been used.[4][5][6][7] The six-bit character code was an often-used implementation in early encoding systems, and computers using six-bit and nine-bit bytes were common in the 1960s. These systems often had memory words of 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, or 60 bits, corresponding to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 10 six-bit bytes. In this era, bit groupings in the instruction stream were often referred to as syllables[a] or slab, before the term byte became common." If you want to be specific, you could say "octet" to describe a set of 8 bits.
- theflyinghorse 6y agoThe worst part is not that its 50 years old. The worst part is that some places still INSIST on using it. For instance I have to deal with FOTA and it's a pain.
- crazypython 6y agoOlder technologies are more reliable and last longer, because they have survived the changes of time. That also means if you learn older technology (my rule of thumb is 15+– think Elixir, Lisp, Haskell, Python, Java, C++), your knowledge is unlikely to expire.
- Jtsummers 6y agoI think you mean Erlang there and not Elixir. Elixir itself is only 10 years old, Erlang is 35. That said, Elixir does seem to be pretty stable, I've not run into major issues when learning it with regard to dated material being "wrong" (either actually wrong with regard to the current language incarnation, incomplete like pre-`go mod` golang materials, or "off" from the current idiomatic use of the language).
- TwoBit 6y agoFTP is not reliable. It has survived (though it's nearly dead) only due to entrenchment.
- Anthony-G 6y agoI was surprised to discover that FTP (or SFTP) is not reliable. A couple of years ago, I discovered that there were mis-matches between files sent to a remote SFTP server using Perl’s `Net::SFTP` and the checksum that was sent after the complete set had been transmitted. The uploaded files were a few bytes smaller than they should have been. I didn’t have the time/resources for a deep dive to determine the root cause of the problem so my work-around at the time was to use `stat` to compare file sizes of the local and uploaded file. If they didn’t match, the file was simply re-transmitted – and it always worked the second time. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- raverbashing 6y agoSo, do we still have to give our email to enter in Anonymous mode? And can we use PASV?
- taviso 6y agoI always thought it was clever that the PNG format was designed so that readers could catch various kinds of transfer errors, including the error of accidentally using FTP ASCII mode (rather than binary mode). That way you get a very clear error message, rather than some confusing CRC failure. http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/spec/1.2/PNG-Rationale.html#R.PNG-file-signature http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/spec/1.2/PNG-Rationale.html#R.... (ASCII mode automatically translates line-endings, which can break non-text formats in confusing ways)
- basscomm 6y agoYou never had to enter a real email address (or anything that looked like an email address) on any anonymous FTP server I've ever used. You could usually leave it blank, but if a server really wanted me to enter something and I didn't feel like mashing the keyboard, I would sometimes use the address of the server's administrator or some well-known email address that wasn't mine.
- toast0 6y agoYou can just put webmaster@ (no domain) and that almost always works it there's any check. Maybe ftpmaster@ would be more appropriate though.
- jsrcout 6y agoI always used me@myhouse.org :-)
- dekhn 6y agoOne of my first real internet experiences was downloading random crap via FTP from WSMR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simtel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simtel)
- AdmiralAsshat 6y agoJust in time for it to be completely removed from Chrome, Firefox, etc.
- jedimastert 6y agoI don't know. Maybe I'm just of a different time, but I feel like ftp is outside the scope of a browser
- layer8 6y agoI like the user-facing simplicity of FTP as a text-based interface for browsing and downloading/uploading files. No broken links, as the directory layout generally doesn’t change every other year, no eternal-beta web UI, diverse choice of powerful native clients. It’s unfortunate that the protocol itself didn’t held up so well.
- CA0DA 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26832945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26832945
- dec0dedab0de 6y agoIt's been about a decade since I've used ftp. I'm trying to remember if there is anything it provides that sftp/scp does not? I remember the egress ports being a pain, and encrypting the traffic required ssl certs and being even more of a pain.
- chasil 6y agoThe FTP protocol has support for this: $ /usr/bin/ftp ftp> help Commands may be abbreviated. Commands are: ...proxy... While I've never been able to make that work correctly, it supposedly allows transfers between two remote hosts (all cleartext of course). The logins work, but the gets and puts don't. It didn't seem worth the time to set up, and similar functionality has been added to SSH file transfer. The SITE command can also run arbitrary programs on the server (becoming something like an rsh), which will never be added to SFTP. I've actually written a couple web applications that drive a VAX with "site spawn" and some DCL.
- teddyh 6y ago> allows transfers between two remote hosts That’s commonly known as “FXP”, and has been disabled for security reasons on all modern platforms.
- skissane 6y ago> It's been about a decade since I've used ftp. I'm trying to remember if there is anything it provides that sftp/scp does not? The FTP protocol provides lots of features that SFTP doesn't. However, most of those distinctive features are rarely implemented in FTP clients for Unix-like systems or Windows. It is more common to find them implemented in mainframe or minicomputer FTP implementations: - Record-oriented files (STRU R). Unix-like systems and Windows don't have any concept of record-oriented files (where the filesystem is aware of record boundaries–on Unix and Windows, record boundaries are an application-level concept only.) Platforms such as IBM mainframe operating systems, and OpenVMS RMS, do have such files, and so FTP implementations for them often support STRU R - Block mode file transfer (MODE B). This is where transfers are broken into blocks and each block has a header with a length and flags. You need this to transfer STRU R files (especially binary STRU R files). Unix and Windows FTP programs generally only support stream transfer mode (MODE S) - Flagging data blocks as corrupt (in a MODE B transfer). This was intended to be used when the file being FTPed is being read directly from a tape. If one of the tape blocks has an invalid checksum, and repeated reads fail to read it with a valid checksum, you can transfer what you read from the block, but set a bit in the block header to indicate the data could be corrupt - Compressed transfers (MODE C). This is like MODE B but blocks can be compressed. Unfortunately the compression is really basic, just run-length encoding. Some non-standardised extensions to FTP add support for better compression formats (e.g. "MODE Z" for zlib), but those generally are adding compression to MODE S not MODE B. - Built-in ASCII-EBCDIC conversion (TYPE A vs TYPE E). Unfortunately, this is not aware of the existence of different variants of ASCII and EBCDIC ("code pages"), although there are some non-standardised extensions to add that (which IBM mainframe FTP servers/clients commonly implement). There was also an Internet draft to define a TYPE U explicitly for UTF-8, but it never advanced to an RFC [0] - Metadata to indicate the carriage control format used in a text file ("FORM"). ("Carriage control" is about telling old-fashioned line printers how to print each line.) You can mark a file as using either ASA carriage control [4] (TYPE A A, TYPE E A), or TELNET carriage control (TYPE A T, TYPE E T; this means carriage control using CR, LF, HT, VT, FF, etc). This feature is rarely implemented except on mainframe platforms where this metadata is supported by the filesystem. (It isn't in the FTP standard, but I believe some IBM mainframe FTP clients/servers also support the IBM proprietary 'machine code' [5] carriage control as well.) - Non-8 bit bytes. This was commonly used with 36-bit operating systems, for example TOPS-10 or TOPS-20, to transfer files made up of 36-bit words (TYPE L 36). - "Paged files" (STRU P). These are files composed of "pages" (blocks) where each page has a header, you can have sparse files (some pages not present), even different access control for each page. Unfortunately, the specification is overly specific to the needs of TOPS-10, and can't really be used on other platforms that have the same concept but implement it in a different way. RFC1123 recommends not to implement this feature. - Account numbers (ACCT). This lets you supply an account number, as well as username (USER) and password (PASS). This was used on some mainframe systems, to bill each transfer to a particular account. (The same user may have access to multiple accounts, and this lets them choose which one to bill the transfer to – consider the case of an academic working on multiple research projects simultaneously.) - Structure Mount (SMNT). This lets you mount a filesystem over FTP. Most commonly used for DOS/Windows FTP servers to change drive letters. - Store Unique (STOU). Allows you to upload a file without choosing a name for it. The server chooses a unique name for you, and at the end of the transfer tells you the name it chose. - Allocate space for a file (ALLO). This allows you to allocate disk space for a file upfront before you transfer it. For record-oriented files (STRU R) or page-oriented files (STRU P), also supports specifying the maximum size of a record/page. Especially used in IBM mainframe operating systems where you are expected to say how big your file (dataset) is going to be before you write any data to it. (In principle, this could be implemented on Linux using fallocate, but in practice Linux FTP servers just ignore the ALLO command.) It is common for IBM mainframe systems to prefer FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS) over SFTP, because they actively implemented and use some of the above features which are unique to FTP and lacking in SFTP. IBM mainframe FTP servers also often offer lots of proprietary (non-standard) features in their FTP servers, such as setting dataset allocation parameters, submitting batch jobs (JCL), checking batch job status and retrieving batch job output, executing MVS console commands, running SQL queries (especially with DB2). Since FTP commands are ASCII, it is easy to invoke commands not supported by a particular FTP client simply with "QUOTE SITE". That generally isn't possible with SFTP, since its commands are in a binary format. There are also some interesting FTP extensions defined for use with high-performance computing – GridFTP [1] [2] [3], including an extended version of block mode (MODE E) with support for "striped" transfers, in which multiple connections (possibly even running across different hosts) transfer different parts of a very large file. [0] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-klensin-ftpext-typeu-00 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-klensin-ftpext-typeu-00 [1] https://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.20.pdf https://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.20.pdf [2] https://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.21.pdf https://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.21.pdf [3] https://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.47.pdf https://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.47.pdf [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASA_carriage_control_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASA_carriage_control_character... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Machine_Code_Printer_Control_Characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Machine_Code_Printer_Contr...
- dominiek 6y agoAmazing. 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 pod with a Node.js based FTP server optimized for one thing: Transferring files between FTP and Google Cloud Storage. A series of ports are specified in the Docker file to enable passive FTP transfers. Even more amusing was the number of varieties in which FTP was implemented by different hardware manufacturers. I regularly had to dive into the FTP libraries to add support for crazy edge cases (tcpflow in kubectl exec -it is your friend!). Example: one device added a newline in the middle of a command (USER\n myusername).. The latest curve ball I received this week is that a certain firmware version of a Qualcomm modem chip cannot deal with the size of the IP packets coming from our FTP server... Fun stuff!
- marsven_422 6y agoWhy FTP when there is tFTP?
- gogopuppygogo 6y agoI’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.
- lightdot 6y agoJust to note for those who don't know, FTPS and SFTP are completely different protocols. The similarity of the names often causes confusion, but SFTP has nothing to do with the venerable FTP. SFTP stands for "SSH file transfer protocol" and it's a completely different beast. IMHO, a somewhat unfortunate naming choice, but that's water under the bridge. (...while FTPS stands for "FTP over SSL", and that actually uses plain old FTP with an additional SSL/TLS layer...)
- chasil 6y agoThese 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 (amidst jump host and other scope creep frenzy), anonymous mode and URL support in a browser. A new file transfer protocol, restricted to DJB ciphers a la Wireguard, able to run over TCP or UDP would likely be best. If Chrome and Safari both added browser clients, the server world would likely dump most FTP the next day. https://mywiki.wooledge.org/FtpMustDie https://mywiki.wooledge.org/FtpMustDie
- stephvd 6y agoNice, thanks for sharing this! Sometimes I forget 50 years doesn't refer to the 50s or 60s anymore :)
- molticrystal 6y agoOn the other side upcoming Firefox 90 is removing support for FTP: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/04/15/built-in-ftp-implementation-to-be-removed-in-firefox-90/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/04/15/built-in-ftp-impl...
- poyu 6y agoAww man, I wonder what the reason is. Firefox is always my go to application for opening things I only use every once in a while.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoBecause -very- few people use it per their telemetry so they don't want to maintain it anymore. It makes sense to throw out a sizeable chunk of code that is only being used by 0.1% of your users. Lftp is great command line replacement for it and extremely scriptable.
- LocalH 6y agoThey kinda need to stop acting like their telemetry is the full picture. Their telemetry led them to believe that compact mode was barely used, yet look at the community backlash (which they summarily ignore because "muh telemetry").
- kwyjobojoe 6y agoThis could just be auto tested as the code would rarely change. It's like Firefox devel has a dartboard of unique and useful features to be randomly removed.
- andrewfromx 6y agothe one big mistake the original protocol made: when sending a file it just starts streaming bytes without first sending the total size of the file. Makes it impossible to know, did the transfer complete 100%? Hence you have to be able to resume a partial transfer.
- cpr 6y agoFun trivia: in the early days of the ARPAnet, mail was delivered (at least on PDP-10's) by FTP-appending a message in to the receipients mailbox file. (Which was protected as append-only to world (owner, group, world).) Didn't last long, obviously, but that was back in the days when every site had a well-publicized guest login and you could telnet anywhere. (Well, OK, in 1972 there were only a few dozen nodes, but there were some really interesting ones to play with.) We used to play a game with telnet from HARV-10 where we'd telnet-chain around the world until someone dropped the connection or it got too slow.
- gnufx 6y agoBack in the days of X.25 and the UK "coloured book" protocols, grey book email went over blue book "network independent FTP" (in batch). I don't know how NIFTP compared with ARPANET FTP as a protocol, though.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kypro 6y agoNot 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 because it was also not unheard of to not have regular db back ups. No one really questioned it too much though. Stuff like that just happened from time to time back then. I rarely ever use FTP today. I wonder if students learning to code today even know what FTP is? It was one of the first things I learnt when learning to build websites as a teenager, but I don't that's the case anymore. It's kind of interesting how processes in tech have evolved as much as the technology over the last few decades. It's hard to think of a good usecase for FTP anymore, but just a couple of decades ago it was used everywhere. Is anyone still using it for anything?
- formercoder 6y agoDon’t worry, SFTP is the backbone of the US financial system.
- robotixonic 6y ago...and the US healthcare system.
- hansor 6y agoAnd big mobile telecoms as well.
- quelltext 6y agoBut SFTP is nothing like FTP (in terms of protocol).
- blabitty 6y agoPreach. I was setting up SFTP batch jobs for financial data last year. New jobs, not migrations.
- indus 6y agoThank you FTP for giving us Spotify. FTP -> Ratio servers -> Napster -> MP3.com -> iTunes -> Spotify.
- indus 6y agoFTP's contribution to music industry: FTP -> Ratio servers -> Napster -> MP3.com -> 99c songs on iTunes -> 24x7 streaming music.
- lolc 6y agoAnd just the other month, we switched a transmission from SFTP to FTP because we couldn't be bothered to deal with the bottlenecks in the SFTP stack. HTTP? Maybe next year :-)
- throwawayftphub 6y agoTangentially related. About 10 years ago I considered an idea that would allow websites to accept large files. The web admin would either embed our company's page as an iframe or just link to our whitelabeled url, such as "mydomain.ftphub.com". The admin would then get an email with a download link. Or they could reverse the process and send a link to a customer the way yousendit does. I still own the domains ftphub.com and ftphub.net, and I put the domains at auction since it looks like I'll never get around to it. Should I work on this ? Or has this opportunity been commoditized to the point where I there is no way it could turn a profit ? Also has anyone under 30 even heard of "ftp" ? The abbreviation in our brand but not sure it's meaningful anymore. Thanks and sorry if this is too off topic.
- cumwolf 6y agounder 30 and yes ive heard of FTP. I used them at school to submit assignments for some classes and I use FTPs (albeit sparingly) at my current place of work.
- desktopninja 6y agoOld but not obsolete.
- mickael-kerjean 6y agoDefinitly, there's about 10 millions server with port 21 opened (source: https://www.shodan.io/search?query=port%3A21 https://www.shodan.io/search?query=port%3A21)
- bsagdiyev 6y agoOne of those is definitely mine. I have an anonymous FTP server up and serving a bunch of old goldsrc game maps and mods, mostly for my own nostalgia but sharing for anyone else who liked the original Half-Life series and mods as much as I did.
- rfraile 6y agoChoosing a ftp server in 2021 is an decission between two options, bad and worse. Vsftpd is easier to setup than proftpd but it last release was 6 years ago...
- inglor_cz 6y agoAnd the author of the protocol is still alive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhay_Bhushan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhay_Bhushan
- every 6y agoHappy Birthday!
- SturgeonsLaw 6y agoThis places the creation of FTP closer to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire than the present day
- geenew 6y agoJust adding to the praise. I still use FTP regularly and greatly appreciate it. It's one of those things that stands up to its name: it's a file transfer protocol, and is still, practically, the best.
- SulphurCrested 6y agoFTP is still used by some photographers at major sporting events. The cameras they use actually have RJ jacks in the side, and they run Ethernet cables back to a router, or maybe a second operator with a computer. The cameras have built-in FTP clients, and can upload image files as they are taken. It's apparently important for stills images to appear in near-real-time on sports web sites.
- discobean 6y agoCan confirm, it is still very popular, so much so we even built a cloud service to connect FTP to your S3 or Azure buckets, to future-ise it somewhat. Come check it out if it's something you might need, https://docevent.io https://docevent.io
- cybert00th 6y agoI'm 54, so news like this is a little bit of a scary reminder of my mortality. :-( Still, a couple of years back now I had to setup an IP-limited SFTP server for our comms team. But I made them 'sign in blood' that it was a temporary solution until their supplier could implement a more secure alternative. Like I said, it was a few years ago... FTP definitely still has its uses, it just needs careful thought and setup.
- qyi 6y agoModern cryptography is almost 50 years old.