The Tech Platform
Dec 21, 20213 min
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is used to send/receive file from the remote computer. It is defined in RFC959. FTP establishes two connections between client system and server system, one for control information and the other for data to be transfered. Control information carry commands/response. Authentication need to be done initially by way of validating username and password. Once it is done files can be transferred between two systems. FTP handles both binary and text format files.
When a FTP client requests to connect to the FTP server, a TCP connection is being established to the FTP server's port 21 reserved for FTP. After authentication is done, another TCP connection is being established for the actual data transfer on port number 20.
get,put are popular FTP commands. In order to avoid use of commands there are GUI based FTP applications have been developed, one of the popular application I have come across is FTP commander PRO another and another application is FileZilla.
Speed: One of the biggest advantages of FTP is speed. The FTP is one of the fastest way to transfer the files from one computer to another computer.
Efficient: It is more efficient as we do not need to complete all the operations to get the entire file.
Security: To access the FTP server, we need to login with the username and password. Therefore, we can say that FTP is more secure.
Back & forth movement: FTP allows us to transfer the files back and forth. Suppose you are a manager of the company, you send some information to all the employees, and they all send information back on the same server.
The standard requirement of the industry is that all the FTP transmissions should be encrypted. However, not all the FTP providers are equal and not all the providers offer encryption. So, we will have to look out for the FTP providers that provides encryption.
FTP serves two operations, i.e., to send and receive large files on a network. However, the size limit of the file is 2GB that can be sent. It also doesn't allow you to run simultaneous transfers to multiple receivers.
Passwords and file contents are sent in clear text that allows unwanted eavesdropping. So, it is quite possible that attackers can carry out the brute force attack by trying to guess the FTP password.
It is not compatible with every system.
TFTP stands for Trivial File Transfer Protocol. It is defined in RFC783. It is simpler than FTP, does file transfer between client and server process but does not provide user authentication and other useful features supported by FTP. TFTP uses UDP while FTP uses TCP.
As TFTP is unreliable protocol due to UDP, it uses application layer recovery supported by UDP. This is done by embedding a small header between the UDP header and the data. This header incorporates codes for example read,write and acknowledgement along with numbering scheme which numbers 512 bytes of data. These block numbers provided are used to acknowledge the receipt and re-send the data in case of checksum failures. TFTP sends one block and waits on acknowledgement before sending another block.
It is fast File Transfer Protocol
Network device configuration files can be easily transferred with this protocol
It can be easily used with 3rd software on Windows and Linux Operating Systems
It is recommended to use this protocol
Uses UDP as the Transport protocol (Unlike FTP using TCP port 21).
Used to Read or Write files from the remote server
It supports three different transmission modes : "netascii", "octet" and "mail".
Its is an unsecured FTP
Does not provide file security compared to FTP
Performs file transfer and file transfer only
There is no authentication or encryption mechanism.
It does not list the contents of directories.
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