RFC 479 (rfc479) - Page 1 of 5

Use of FTP by the NIC Journal

Network Working Group                               James E. White (JEW)
Request for Comments:  479                                       SRI-ARC
NIC: 14948                                                 March 8, 1973


                     Use of FTP by the NIC Journal

   At the Network Mail Meeting (see -- 14317,) the NIC outlined it's
   requirements for implementing FTP Journal delivery and submission.

   It had always been our thinking that those two services should rely
   upon the File Transfer Protocol's MLFL command for their
   implementation.

   Prior to the meeting, we had envisioned that, in the case of
   submission, for example, the user would embed what parameters the NIC
   required (e.g., an indication that this piece of mail was to be
   journalized, a list of NIC idents, etc.) in the USERNAME field of the
   MLFL command, in a way that was transparent to his FTP user process,
   and that SRI-ARC's FTP server process would parse the 'user name' for
   the parameters and internally invoke the Journal System with them and
   the text of the mail as arguments.

      Our goal (which this scheme would have satisfied) was to provide
      the desired services while confining software changes to our own
      system and, in particular, to avoid requiring that user FTP
      processes or the File Transfer Protocol itself be modified.

   It was, however, the consensus of those present at the meeting that
   it was preferable to modify FTP in such a way that all required
   parameters could be explicitly declared, rather than require that
   they be hidden within what purported to be simply a user name.

   The intent of this RFC is to list what we (the NIC) believe were the
   new FTP commands it was agreed should be defined in support of mail
   submission and delivery. Actually, we've done some massaging after
   thinking about the issues for awhile, and so this is really a
   description of what we'd like to see included in the File Transfer
   Protocol (following the lines of thought which developed at the
   meeting), along with a short description of how the NIC would use
   them.

   Some of the commands currently make sense only if issued TO the NIC's
   FTP server process (as opposed to anybody else's) and others only if
   issued BY the NIC's FTP user process (as opposed to anybody else's).
   This is true because currently only the NIC plans to offer mail





White