In 2020, there's still millions of FTP servers exposed to the internet and all popular FTP servers are still being actively maintained While it is true that FTP wasn't initially created with security in mind, the protocol got refined in 2005 to support TLS with RFC4217 Is FTP outdated?īeing invented 18 years before Time Berners Lee invented HTTP, FTP has passed the test of time. If we account only for the visible side of the iceberg, there are about as many FTP servers exposed to the internet as the entire population of Switzerland. The original specification of FTP was published the 16 April 1971 and was revisited several times in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.įTP is a means by which two machines can transfer files over a network.

įTP was invented by Abhay Bhushan while he was a student at MIT. Example: Filezilla FTP, Filestash, Cyberduck.

It is used to enable the sharing of files between different parties over a network.Īn FTP client is a software that can be used to access an FTP server. It has been defined in many different RFCs What is FTP used for?įTP is used to transfer files over a networkĪn FTP server is a server software that implements the FTP protocol (example: PureFTPd, bftpd, proFTPd, Filezilla server. FTP is a protocol that defines how two machines (known as the client and the server) can communicate over a network to transfer files.

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