> -----Original Message----- > From: ietf <ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Livingood, Jason > Sent: 17 November 2020 16:42 > To: Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; ietf@xxxxxxxx > Subject: Re: Call for Community Feedback: Retiring IETF FTP Service > > On 11/17/20, 10:46 AM, "ietf on behalf of Keith Moore" <ietf- > bounces@xxxxxxxx on behalf of moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I cannot say this often enough: Traffic volume is not an indicator of > importance. > > [JL] Fair enough. But we also have a count of the number of hosts using > the FTP interface and that is a quite small number. Most seem to be > scripted, presumably to create a mirror of the RFCs. > > > Also, perhaps the IETF and IAB should be a bit less dogmatic, in light > of experience. I keep seeing situations in which deprecation of old > TLS > versions is breaking systems for which there is no browser that > supports > the new TLS versions. IMO this does significant harm. > > [JL] The IETF regularly standardizes new protocols that leads to "creative > disruption" globally. This brings countless positive benefits, such as > pervasive encryption or real-time voice and video communications, but it > surely has some downsides/impacts. It seems odd that we may be unable to > do just a little bit of what we ask others to do in terms of disruption > and proceed forward by dropping legacy unencrypted protocols with no > apparent user demand & embracing more modern and secure communication > protocols. BTW FTP was first specified 49 years ago in 1971. ;-) > [RW] If the world ever reaches the stage where only 0.2% of traffic is IPv4 and rest is IPv6 (or newer) then I wonder if ISPs will be willing to keep the IPv4 service up and running? Clearly there is some cost to keeping the FTP service running, but: - Roman's analysis seems to indicate that it is used by very few individuals, - there are viable alternatives (e.g., rsync, curl, wget, https), and - Roman has even kindly offered help for folks to migrate, if required. I think that it is great that IETF has managed to offer the FTP service for so long, but on balance, it seems to have reached a point where the benefits no longer outweigh the costs, and pragmatically it seems like it is time to turn it off. Regards, Rob
