🚀 go-pugleaf

burton@asdsun.larc.nasa.gov (John Burton) writes:

   HUH??? Perhaps I misunderstand...

Sounds like it.

FTP uses two TCP streams, each of which present a reliable, sequenced
byte stream.  The "control" connection (which specifies what operations
to perform, what files to transfer, etc.) is completely ASCII-based.
The data connection (over which the files themselves are transferred)
is not interpreted by the FTP protocol under normal circumstances.

Now, it is true that the TCP code uses a standard byte order for packet
headers, sequence numbers, etc., but FTP itself doesn't care.  All it
wants is two reliable byte streams.

   ...so that when machine A sends an integer to machine B describing the file
   to be transfered, machine B will understand what machine A is talking
   about... 

Right.  This information is sent in printable ASCII.

--
Amanda Walker						      amanda@visix.com
Visix Software Inc.					...!uunet!visix!amanda
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