[Info-vax] preventing FTP from timing out

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
> On 2012-10-02 18:52:23 +0000, Richard B. Gilbert said:

>> On 10/2/2012 8:53 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
 
>>> FTP is a hideous protocol.  It's inherently incompatible with modern
>>> networks, and it's wildly insecure.

(snip)

> FTP opens a second connection - for the data transfer - in a way that 
> can and variously is blocked by the firewalls that often lurk within 
> network connections these days, which means folks managing FTP 
> transfers are tussling with the related errors, or they're using an 
> FTP-aware firewall, or (less desirably) have configured a DMZ FTP 
> server that's running with the ephemeral port range wide open.

Passive ftp avoids most of those problems. Not all clients
know how to do it, but most public servers should do it.

> FTP transmits authentication credentials in cleartext, too.

Not usually a problem for anonymous ftp.

Use wget, available for most popular systems.

-- glen