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From: chris@CS.UMD.EDU (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  BITNET -- Internet capabilities
Message-ID: <8910282012.AA20961@mimsy.UMD.EDU>
Date: 28 Oct 89 20:12:11 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 39

>From: jqj@rt-jqj.Stanford.EDU (JQ Johnson)
>
>This ... is usually implemented as writing the files to a remote spool
>area where disk space is charged to the system rather than the target
>user, and the target user may retrieve the files or not within some
>reasonable time. ... The key feature that it has which SMTP-based email
>lacks is a standard (sort of) for sending non-textual data.  X.400 with
>its provision for arbitrary binary attachments may make this BITNET
>feature obsolete.  But Internet-only users should not be so
>narrowminded as to think that ftp is the "one true way" to manage file
>transfer!

	% ftp remotehost.biguniv.edu
	<greeting stuff>
	User: anonymous
	Password: me@here
	<restriction stuff>
	type image
	<image mode OK>
	put local-file incoming/remote-file
	<file goes across>
	quit

Now all we need is to write it up as an RFC (changing the `put
local-file incoming/remote-file' sequence to a new `give' command, so
that the `incoming/' can go away), and write a front end called `give'
or whatever that does the above automatically.  Hosts can expire stuff
in ~ftp/incoming, or whatever they name this spool directory, as often
as desired.

In other words, we need only one change to the FTP protocol (to add a
command that means `I am sending you a file that you should put in your
spool directory, whatever its name may be'), along with some front
ends so that `given' files are handled much like mail: spooled on
the local machine until the transfer can happen.
-- 
`They were supposed to be green.'
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@cs.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris