Internetworking Technology

One of the most important services provided by the TCP/IP for copying a file from one host to another is the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). It seems to be very simple for transferring files between the systems. But there are a lot of complexities involved in the process. For instance the two systems may use different file name conventions and they may also express text and data in different formats. But FTP handles these conditions elegantly differing from other client-server applications. It creates two connections between the hosts, one for data transfer and the other for information control. It is famous for its efficiency and effectiveness as it handles commands and data transfer separately. The protocols used by the control connection are very simple for establishing communication whereas for the data connection more complex protocols have been employed only due to the presence of various data formats.

It transfers commands and responses line by line with one line at a time. The FTP client and server may use different operating systems, different software, different file formats. But it should be capable of dealing with this heterogeneity. It has two approaches over the control and data connections. For control connection, commands and responses are responsible for achieving communication. Therefore one short line of commands or responses at a time relieves from worrying about different file structure. For data connection, transfer of files is the ultimate task. Here, the client defines all the information about the data prior to transmission. This makes the control connection to be prepared for transmission thereby solving the heterogeneity problem.

4 Responses to “FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL”