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From: rick@SEISMO.CSS.GOV (Rick Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  FTP advisory messages
Message-ID: <8709151941.AA09356@beno.CSS.GOV>
Date: Tue, 15-Sep-87 15:41:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: beno.8709151941.AA09356
Posted: Tue Sep 15 15:41:13 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 17-Sep-87 06:16:22 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 21

ftp contains a "SITE" word that is largely unused. It would be
really nice if most implementations agreed on what came after
the SITE word.

E.g. It would be really nice to have the user mode ftp program
automatically send "SITE UNIX" (or something along that line) and the
ftp server on the other machine return success or failure. Then, if
the user ftp got success as an answer, it could automagically 
set the type to image. If it got back anything but successful, it would
do nothing, so no harm would be done.

I actually implemented this a few years ago. There was one major
problem with it. The TOPS-20 ftp servers always returned success
to ANY SITE command. Obviously, this screwed up things royally. I was never
successful in getting anyone to admit that the TOPS-20 was broken and
to fix it.

It's a pity that SITE can't be used. It work work wonderfully in this
particular case.

---rick