File Transfer Protocol: FTP
Saturday, December 12th, 2009In a typical FTP session, the user is sitting in front of one host (the local host) and wants to transfer files to or from a remote host. In order for the user to access the remote account, the user must provide a user identification and a password. After providing this authorization information, the user can transfer files from the local file system to the remote file system and vice versa. The user interacts with FTP through an FTP user agent. The user first provides the hostname of the remote host, causing the FI’P client process in the local host to establish a TCP connection with the FTP server process in the remote host. The user then provides the user identification and password, which an sent over the TCP connection as part of FTP commands. Once the server has authorized the user, the user copies one or more files stored in the local file system into the remote tile system (or vice versa).
HTTP and FTP are both file transfer protocols and have many common characteristics; for example, they both run on top of TCP. However, the two application-layer protocols have some important differences. The most striking difference is that FTP uses two parallel TCP connections to transfer a file, a control connection and a data connection. The control connection is used for sending control information between the two hosts–information such as user identification, password, commands to change remote directory,-and commands to “put” and “get” files. The data connection is used to actually send a file, Because FTP uses a separate control connection, FTP is said to send its control information out-of-band. We’ll see that the RTSP protocol, which is used for controlling the transfer of continuous media such as audio and video, also sends its control information out-of-band. HTI’P, as you recall, sends request and response header lines into the same TCP connection that carries the transferred file itself. For this reason, HTTP is said to send its control information In-band. In the next section we’ll see that SMTP, the main protocol for electronic mail, also sends control information in-band.
When a user start p )9P session with a remote host, the client side of FTP (user) first initiates a control TCP connection with the server side (remote host) on server port number 21. The client side of F1′P sends the user identification and password over this control connection. The client side of FTP also sends, over the control connection, commands to change the remote directory. When the server side receives a command for a file transfer over the control connection (either to, or from, the remote host), the server side Initiates TCP data connection to the client side? FTP send exactly one file over the data connection and then closes the data connection If, during the same session the user wants to transfer another file FTP open another data connection. Thus, with FTP, the control connection remains open throughout the duration of the user session, but a new data connection is created for each file transferred within a session (that is. the data connections arc non-persistent).
Throughout a session, the FTP server must maintain state about the user In particular, the server must associate the control connection with a specific user account, and the server must keep track of the user’s current directory as the user wanders i put the remote directory tree. Keeping track of this state information for each ongoing user session significantly constrains the total number of sessions that FTP? can maintain simultaneously. Recall that HTTP, on the other hand , is stateless–it does not have to keep track of any user state.
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