RFC 1639 (rfc1639) - Page 1 of 5

FTP Operation Over Big Address Records (FOOBAR)

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Network Working Group D. Piscitello
Request for Comments: 1639 Core Competence, Inc.
Obsoletes: 1545 June 1994
Category: Experimental

FTP Operation Over Big Address Records (FOOBAR)

Status of this Memo

This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any
kind. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Abstract

This paper describes a convention for specifying address families
other than the default Internet address family in FTP commands and
replies.

Introduction

In the File Transfer Protocol (STD 9, RFC 959), the PORT command
argument specifies the data port to be used to establish
a data connection for FTP (STD 9, RFC 959). This argument is also
used in the PASV reply to request the server-DTP to listen on a data
port other than its default data port. This RFC specifies a method
for assigning addresses other than 32-bit IPv4 addresses to data
ports through the specification of a "long Port (LPRT)" command and
"Long Passive (LPSV)" reply, each having as its argument a , which allows for additional address families, variable
length network addresses and variable length port numbers.

This is a general solution, applicable for all "next generation" IP
alternatives, as well as for other network protocols than IP. This
revision also extends FTP to allow for its operation over transport
interfaces other than TCP.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to all the folks in the IETF who casually mentioned how
to do this, but who left it to me to write this RFC. Special thanks
to Rich Colella, Bob Ullmann, Steve Lunt, Jay Israel, Jon Postel,
Shawn Ostermann, and Tae Kyong Song, who contributed to this work.

Piscitello

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