RFC 1415 (rfc1415) - Page 3 of 58
FTP-FTAM Gateway Specification
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 1415 FTP-FTAM Gateway Specification January 1993
have quite different command structures, the mappings between them
are not one-to-one. This paper assumes knowledge of the File
Transfer Protocol (FTP) [RFC 959] and the File Transfer, Access, and
Management Protocol (FTAM) [ISO8571-1,2,3,4,5].
Two important goals of the mappings are to:
Provide FTP users with as much emulated FTP capability on an
FTAM Responder as possible, and
Provide FTAM users with as much emulated FTAM capability on an
FTP Server as possible.
Though it is anticipated that the application layer gateway will be
implemented on full protocol suites of both TCP/IP and OSI, at least
one implementation of such a gateway (included in the ISO Development
Environment) can be configured to operate FTAM over either OSI or
TCP/IP lower-layer services.
1.1. Relationship to Other Work
Ideas presented in this specification are based on lessons learned in
fielding the gateway on the MILNET, operational at NCTS Washington
D.C. since 1989, and on the efforts of M. A. Wallace et al. of the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) [NIST86]. In
1986, NIST published a design document for an FTP-FTAM gateway.
Since that time, at least one implementation (for a subset of the FTP
and FTAM protocols) of the gateway has been developed [MITRE87] and
is included with the ISODE. This implementation is based on the NIST
protocol translator gateway design [NIST86].
This document's contribution to the advancement of the FTP-FTAM
gateway concept is to:
* Enhance the user interaction capability provided by the ISODE
implementation of the FTP-FTAM application layer gateway.
* Clarify and enhance the mappings (FTP to FTAM, FTAM to FTP)
documented by NIST.
* Provide guidelines for fielding the FTP-FTAM application layer
gateway on the Internet so that it is useful as an Internet
resource.
* Produce a formal specification for the FTP-FTAM gateway suitable
for implementors to use in building additional FTP-FTAM
gateways.
Mindel & Slaski