Status of this Memo

This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

The specification for the File Transfer Protocol assumes that the underlying network protocol uses a 32-bit network address (specifically IP version 4). With the deployment of version 6 of the Internet Protocol, network addresses will no longer be 32-bits. This paper specifies extensions to FTP that will allow the protocol to work over IPv4 and IPv6. In addition, the framework defined can support additional network protocols in the future.

1. Introduction

The keywords, such as MUST and SHOULD, found in this document are used as defined in RFC 2119 [Bra97].

The File Transfer Protocol [PR85] only provides the ability to communicate information about IPv4 data connections. FTP assumes network addresses will be 32 bits in length. However, with the deployment of version 6 of the Internet Protocol [DH96] addresses will no longer be 32 bits long. RFC 1639 [Pis94] specifies extensions to FTP to enable its use over various network protocols. Unfortunately, the mechanism can fail in a multi-protocol environment.