RE: Call for Community Feedback: Retiring IETF FTP Service

[Roman Danyliw <[e-mail]>]

Hi!

I've received various private inquiries for additional clarity on FTP usage and what constitutes "a small community" beyond what's already in the proposed retirement plan [1].  To that end, I pulled together a few more detailed stats.  This more detailed survey only looks at one of the periods referenced in [1] so the stats will vary a little bit (but the trends are the same).  Please excuse the lack of polish and document location as this was quick and dirty.  See:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JAXspeaMWFl8ML3hSezFSM0VsJsHI4uyDlQ2dHip8jo/edit?usp=sharing

A few summary observations:
** ~91 users of FTP (from 140 unique IPs)
** 78% of all traffic created by 5 users
** 40% of FTP users made 1 file request
** FTP is 0.2% of HTTP traffic (to documents)
** >99% of all FTP traffic is users performing bulk downloads or search engine behavior

Regards,
Roman

[1] https://www.ietf.org/media/documents/Retiring_IETF_FTP_Service.pdf

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roman Danyliw
> Sent: Monday, November 9, 2020 9:24 PM
> To: '[e-mail]' <[e-mail]>
> Subject: Call for Community Feedback: Retiring IETF FTP Service
> 
> Hi!
> 
> The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) is seeking community input on
> retiring the IETF FTP service (ftp://ftp.ietf.org, ftp://ops.ietf.org, ftp://ietf.org).
> A review of this service has found that FTP appears to serve a very small
> community and HTTP has become the access mechanism of choice.  Given this
> shift in community usage, reducing the operational complexity of the overall
> IETF infrastructure seems to outweigh the very limited community served with
> FTP.
> 
> In reviewing the additional impacts of such a service retirement, the
> dependencies on FTP have been assessed.  Additionally, it has been confirmed
> that all information currently reachable through FTP will continue to be
> available through other services (HTTP, RSYNC, IMAP).
> 
> In consultation with the Tools team (Robert, Glen, Henrik, Russ, and Alexey),
> Communications team (Greg), affected SDO liaisons, IAB Chair, and LLC ED, a
> proposed retirement plan was developed and is available at:
> 
> https://www.ietf.org/media/documents/Retiring_IETF_FTP_Service.pdf
> 
> The IESG appreciates any input from the community on this proposal and will
> consider all input received by December 4, 2020 (to account for the upcoming
> IETF 109 and holidays).
> 
> Regards,
> Roman
> (as the IESG Tools Liaison)