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- From: A.J.Doherty@reading.ac.uk (A. J. Doherty)
- Newsgroups: alt.comp.fsp,alt.answers,news.answers
- Subject: File Service Protocol (FSP) Frequently Asked Questions [Part 2/2]
- Followup-To: alt.comp.fsp
- Date: 24 Jul 1995 18:02:57 GMT
- Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., University of Reading
- Lines: 219
- Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <3v0n8h$dq1@susscsc1.rdg.ac.uk>
- Reply-To: A.J.Doherty@reading.ac.uk
- NNTP-Posting-Host: suma3-e2.reading.ac.uk
- Summary: This posting contains a list of frequently asked questions
- (and their answers) about the FSP protocol. Please read this
- before you post to alt.comp.fsp.
- Keywords: fsp administrivia
- Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu alt.comp.fsp:3187 alt.answers:10878 news.answers:49174
-
- Archive-name: fsp-faq/part2
- Last-modified: 1995/07/21
- Version: 1.0
- Frequency: Twice Monthly
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Section 3: Technical Issues
-
- Q.3.1 What are the main differences between FSP and FTP? How does FSP work?
-
- From the user's point of view, the differences are not that great, except that
- some of the more annoying features of FTP are gone. Here are the main
- differences.
-
- * The protocol can stand things going down: if the server or the network
- falls over in the middle of a transfer, you can just wait until it comes
- back up. You don't have to reconnect, and even better, if the server went
- down 90% through grabbing a file, you can continue from where you left
- off.
-
- * The protocol doesn't need a username or password. You just throw packets
- at the server. You don't have to identify yourself (though you're not
- completely anonymous -- see below).
-
- * It's harder to kill off a site with an FSP server than with an FTP server.
- The FSP daemon is designed to be as lightweight as possible: it doesn't
- fork off any sub-processes, and it takes steps to limit the amount of
- traffic it handles.
-
- * The user interface is completely different. The interface that comes with
- the package consists of eleven commands that you can call from the shell.
- In effect, your shell is providing all the nice functions like command
- line editing. This makes the interface much more versatile than FTP's.
- (See below for how to get an FTP-like interface, though).
-
- * FSP is a bit slower than FTP. This is a feature, not a bug. The point is
- to keep the communication lightweight, and not to flood the net.
-
- From the programmer's point of view, fsp is a complete rewrite.
-
- * Instead of TCP sockets, it uses datagrams to communicate, so that the
- connection doesn't break on a flaky line.
-
- * FTP works by opening a port, and then asking the server to send a file to
- it. FSP uses the same port all the time for communication, and asks for
- segments of a file. So you can start off a transfer half way through a
- file, if you really want to.
-
- * The server tries to make sure you don't ask for packets too quickly. Each
- packet it sends out has a random identification number, which the client
- must return on the next request. (If the client loses the number, it must
- wait a few seconds before the server accepts another packet from it).
- Therefore, the client has to wait for an answer to each request before it
- sends out the next one.
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Q.3.2 How secure/anonymous is FSP?
-
- By default, the FSP daemon keeps logs of transactions, along with their site
- names. An FSP administrator could use this to find out who you are, with a
- reasonable degree of certainty.
-
- In short, FSP gives you no more privacy than anonymous FTP. Anyone who tells
- you different has a less devious mind than most FSP admins I know.
-
- Why not make FSP more anonymous? Well, it's impossible to make a protocol with
- complete anonymity, since at some point, the remote site will have to send a
- file back to you, and it needs at least an address to send it to.
-
- If you really need privacy, you can encrypt any files you make available, and
- only give out the decryption password to a select few. But of course, you have
- to trust them to keep the password safe.
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Q.3.3 Why not add passwords to FSP?
-
- Thanks to Joseph Traub for the material for this section)
-
- * They don't add much security. If you use one password for the whole site,
- then you might just as well set up the site and only tell a few people its
- port number. That's no more or less secure than using a password. Besides,
- it's easier just to set up the server only to respond to certain hosts.
-
- * Any other password system is likely to be a big lose on efficiency, since
- you'll have to check every single packet.
-
- * The main use of server passwords appears to be so that people can move
- pirated software around, and the authors don't want to add code to support
- that.
-
- * This capability does NOT belong in FSP because it gets away from the
- concept of lightweight simple file transfers.
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Q.3.4 So what *does* FSP stand for?
-
- As of 12th August 1993, FSP stands for `File Service Protocol'. Thanks to
- Michael Grubb (mg@ac.duke.edu) for the words, and Wen-King for the initials.
-
- Other suggestions were:
-
- * File Slurping Protocol
- * Flaky Stream Protocol
- * FTP's Sexier Partner
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Section 4: Who's Who?
-
- Q.4.1 Who writes and maintains FSP software?
-
- Unix Versions:
- The current maintainer (as of March 1994) is Andy Doherty
- (A.J.Doherty@reading.ac.uk), who also maintains the alt.comp.fsp FAQ and
- wrote and maintains FSPtool an X-Windows FSP client.
-
- The previous maintainers were Phil Richards (pgr@sst.icl.co.uk) and Pete
- Bevin (pete@bestiary.demon.co.uk) from July 1993 to March 1994. Phil is
- also the maintainer of fspclient, an FTP-like interface for FSP.
-
- Joseph Traub (was jtraub@cs.cmu.edu) was maintainer from Dec 1992 to July
- 1993 (versions 2.6.5 to 2.7.1).
-
- Wen-King Su (wen-king@cs.caltech.edu) wrote the original Unix version
- (versions 1.0 to 2.6.4).
-
- VMS:
- Sven Pechler (S.A.Pechler@bdk.tue.nl) wrote and maintains a VMS version.
-
- OS/2:
- OS/2 is handled by Larkin Lowrey (llowrey@ucsd.edu).
-
- MS-DOS:
- Lindsey Smith, of the MS-DOS rewrite is lsmith@symantec.com
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Q.4.2 Who writes and maintains FSP Client Software?
-
- Jim Browne (jbrowne@jbrowne.com) and Modris Berzonis (imara@mii.lu.lv) are both
- writing (soon to be released?) Macintosh clients. See Section 2.2.3.
-
- Andy Doherty (A.J.Doherty@uk.ac.reading) wrote and maintains 'FSPtool' an
- X-Windows based Unix client. Also the FSP and alt.comp.fsp FAQ maintainer.
-
- Ian Heath (ih@ecs.soton.ac.uk) wrote 'winfsp' an MS-Windows based client.
-
- Nicolai Langfeldt's (janl@ifi.uio.no) wrote and maintains 'fspcli' a Perl based
- client.
-
- Ove Ruben R Olsen (Ruben@uib.no) wrote and maintains 'fspsh', another Perl
- based client.
-
- Phil Richards' (pgr@sst.icl.co.uk) wrote and maintains 'fspclient'.
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Q.4.3 Who helped put this FAQ together?
-
- The following people have contributed to the FAQ. Thanks very much to all of
- them.
-
- * Pete Bevin (pete@bestiary.demon.co.uk)
- * Tony Brannigan (tbrann@ox.ac.uk)
- * Jim Browne (jbrowne@jbrowne.com)
- * Dan Charrois (charro@ee.ualberta.ca)
- * Wilson Cheung (wcheung@netcom.com)
- * Maurizio Codogno (mau@beatles.cselt.stet.it)
- * David DeSimone (fox@netcom.com)
- * Ian Dickinson (vato@violet.csv.warwick.ac.uk)
- * Andy Doherty (A.J.Doherty@reading.ac.uk)
- * Ian Heath (ih@ecs.soton.ac.uk)
- * Jan Nicolai Langfeldt (janl@ifi.uio.no)
- * Larkin Lowrey (llowrey@ucsd.edu)
- * Ove Ruben R Olsen (buboo@uib.no)
- * Jerome Pier (jp@edu.unl.unlinfo)
- * Lutz Prechelt (prechelt@ira.uka.de)
- * Phil Richards (pgr@sst.icl.co.uk)
- * Lindsey Smith (lsmith@symantec.com)
- * Wen-King Su (wen-king@cs.caltech.edu)
- * Joseph Traub (jtraub@cs.cmu.edu)
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Section 5: Site Information
-
- Q.5.1 What FSPable sites exist ?
-
- The following is a small list of the some sites sites which are available
- through the FSP protocol. This list should be reasonably up to date but comes
- with no warranty. It is in the unofficial "taxus" format. ftp.germany.eu.net is
- the official home for FSP software distributions, most packages can be found
- there.
-
- genie.lut.ac.uk 21 genie / # small UK site
- ftp.germany.eu.net 2001 germany / # big German archive (FSP)
- fsp.luth.se 6969 luth / # Top of Europe
- src.doc.ic.ac.uk 21 src / # SUNsite Northern Europe
- terra.stack.urc.tue.nl 21 terra / # big Netherlands site
- ftp.wustl.edu 21 wu / # lots of mirrors ...
-
- For more site information sources see Q.2.3
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Comments and suggestions should be sent to A.J.Doherty@reading.ac.uk. The
- information in this FAQ is in no way associated with the University of Reading
- or its Information Technology Unit. This FAQ represents the efforts of many
- people to help consolidate information about FSP. There is no guarantee that
- the information in this FAQ is correct, nor can anyone contributing to this FAQ
- be held responsible for the information they provide.
-
- Addresses in () after the answer are the email addresses of people who have
- contributed. Please let me know if you don't wish to be identified when you
- contribute.
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-