RFC 141 (rfc141) - Page 1 of 2

Comments on RFC 114: A File Transfer Protocol

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Network Working Group                                      E. F. Harslem
Request for Comments: 141                                  J. F. Haefner
NIC 6726                                                            Rand
                                                           29 April 1971

             COMMENTS ON RFC 141 (A FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL)

   1.  A file transfer protocol is needed.  Bushan's proposal would
   satisfy a particular current need that we have, as well as short-term
   envisioned needs.

   2.  Bushan's protocol would apear to be straight-forward in
   implementation, and extensible as claimed.

   3.  We would like to see implementations of such protocol be
   accomplished such that the file transfer program has general and
   complete access to the local file storage.  That is, it should be
   able to access a file that it did not create.  For example, if a
   program or user creates a file at site X (completely independent of
   the file transfer program), it would then be desirable to be able to
   retrieve the file via the file transfer program.  This is not a
   requirement of RFC #114 but we would like to see it implemented where
   possible.

   4.  Since implementation of a subset of transaction types is
   specifically permitted, we suggest inclusion of the following
   commands (in addition to append).

      insert records     within a file
      delete records     from within a file
      replace records    within a file

   Although these operations are not directly supported under IBM
   OS/360, we have used them with a non-standard file subsystem under
   IBM OS/360 and find them quite useful.

   5.  In addition to retrieve and lookup, get names of files under my
   access control would be useful.

   6.  The absence of status requests and responses is apparent.
   Although this is typically a function associated with a remote job
   entry (RJE) system, since the execute request is present it would
   seem appropriate to inquire about the status of the process created
   by the execute command.  This becomes increasingly more important
   where the execute is implemented as an RJE-like operation and
   scheduling time of the job might be prolonged.





Harslem & Haefner
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