Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!apple!well!nagle
From: nagle@well.UUCP (John Nagle)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: RFC for MPUT and MGET in FTP . . .
Message-ID: <14005@well.UUCP>
Date: 8 Oct 89 19:16:41 GMT
References: <8910071742.AA10249@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: nagle@well.UUCP (John Nagle)
Lines: 17


      Points to know about FTP history:

	1) 3-cornered FTP (source, destination, and control points on 
	   different hosts) never worked.

	2) Transferring many small files in succession tends not to work.
	   If you try to reuse the data connection immediately, it won't
	   reopen, even though the TCP spec says it should.  This is a bug
	   in the spec.  Most current FTP implementations use the PORT
	   command to get a new data connection for each file, leaving the
	   old one to time out in TIME_WAIT state.  This can result in
	   resource exhaustion when many small files are being transferred.
	   This problem can be worked around, at some cost in throughput
	   in the many-tiny-file case.

						John Nagle