Status of this Memo

This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Abstract

This paper describes a convention for specifying address families other than the default Internet address family in FTP commands and replies.

Introduction

In the File Transfer Protocol (STD 9, RFC 959), the PORT command argument specifies the data port to be used to establish a data connection for FTP (STD 9, RFC 959). This argument is also used in the PASV reply to request the server-DTP to listen on a data port other than its default data port. This RFC specifies a method for assigning addresses other than 32-bit IPv4 addresses to data ports through the specification of a "long Port (LPRT)" command and "Long Passive (LPSV)" reply, each having as its argument a , which allows for additional address families, variable length network addresses and variable length port numbers.

This is a general solution, applicable for all "next generation" IP alternatives, as well as for other network protocols than IP. This revision also extends FTP to allow for its operation over transport interfaces other than TCP.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to all the folks in the IETF who casually mentioned how to do this, but who left it to me to write...