Re: [ftpext] FWD: ftp/959 reboot

[Anthony Bryan <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 5:19 PM, Daniel Stenberg <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On Thu, 5 Aug 2010, William F. Maton wrote (quoting Gregory Lundberg):
>
>> Anyone today who attempts to determine what the protocol *is* has to look
>> at far to many RFCs, some offering contradictory specifications.  This is
>> unacceptable for one of the core protocols of the Internet.
>
> I can only agree that the situation is muddy and far from good.

Daniel, any thoughts/insight into the RFC 1123 discussion, which
appears to update RFC 959?

>> Another thing I'd suggest looking at is avoiding any semantic meaning for
>> the data channel.  The term "file" is often used.  But the data channel is
>> just a data channel.  Once established, the FTP really does not care what is
>> sent, which direction it goes, or if data is travelling both wats at the
>> same time. The job of the FTP is to reliably and securely establish the data
>> channel between two resources; nothing more.
>
> I agree. I supposed we could look for inspirations for this in the httpbis
> work.

with inspiration from httpbis, I've been working on a collection of
FTP RFCs: 959, 2389, 2428, 2577 (for now).

the idea would be to have an updated, coherent, harmonious document of
RFCs concerning FTP along
with implementation and real world info like httpbis.

http://www.metalinker.org/test/ftp/draft-bryan-ftpbis-00.txt
http://www.metalinker.org/test/ftp/draft-bryan-ftpbis-00.html

so far, besides collecting the RFCs and errata together, there are no
real changes to text. here's the changelog:

    Incorporate [RFC0959] Errata.
    Incorporate [RFC2389] FEAT at Section 4.1.4.
    Incorporate [RFC2428] "FTP Extensions for IPv6 and NATs" at Section 4.1.2.1.
    Incorporate [RFC2577] in Section 10.
    Include abstract of [RFC4217] in Section 10.2.
    BCP 14 wording.

TODO if there is interest:

    Determine if changes in RFC 1123 should be applied.
    Triage and include or reference other FTP RFCs - RFC 2228, 2640,
2773?, 3659, 4217.
    Update BNF to ABNF.
    Standardize command organization (subsections?) like EPRT/EPSV,
with separated ABNF?
    Move the whole sentence that is Section 8 into Section 3.2?

-- 
(( Anthony Bryan ... Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ]
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