RFC 487

RFC 487: Free File Transfer 💖

The header facts: this is RFC 487, titled Free File Transfer, written by Bob Bressler at BBN, with the NIC number #15065, dated 6 April 1973. The original doesn't list a category, and it doesn't say what it obsoletes or updates. 🎀

In the past several months, so many people have come to me about struggling to transfer files 😭. The hang up is with systems that have some kind of security, but where the user has no access privileges. The FTP server wants a user and password before it lets you do anything. The loophole people have been using is the MAIL FILE facility, which is pretty limited and was never meant for this 💀.

A super common way to protect files is to set up three levels of user access: 1) only the user themself, 2) all users in a group, 3) everyone. Up until now, "everyone" has really meant anyone who already has logon privileges. So we might need a new class for everyone, whether or not they're logged on ✨.

With all that in mind, here's what I'm proposing 🫶:

If a user connects to an FTP server and makes a file request without supplying a user name-password, the server should then check the file access parameters. If the file is listed as accessible to anyone, the transfer should be allowed to go ahead 🦋.

This scheme can be built so it doesn't give away file creation privileges. For example, store commands can be implemented through an append mechanism. If I wanted a file sent to me, I could make an empty file with unlimited append access, then tell the foreign user to store (append?) to that file 🧚.

Accounting is a bit more complicated, not gonna lie 🙈. Storing a file in a user's directory can be charged to that user, obviously. But when you retrieve a file from a general system directory, there's no "user" specified, so overhead might have to be billed. The first case involves both CPU time for the transfer and secondary storage charges for storing the new file. In the second case, only CPU charges are involved, and those might be small enough not to be a major problem 💅.

BBN TENEX has agreed to modify their FTP server to allow general access transfers like the ones described above. Specific usage details will be available once installation is complete. I'm urging other systems to offer this service too, even if it's only on an experimental basis 🌈. How well this experiment goes will depend on how the general user community reacts and what FTP ends up being used for 👑.

NOTE: Bob Clements tells me that the BBN TENEX implementation will probably require a user name of something like "FREE" or "ANONYMOUS", but not require a password. 🍓

RB/jm

RFC 487                    Free File Transfer                 April 1973

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