Date: Fri, 18 Mar 1994 10:16:39 +0500 From: dupuy@smarts.com (Alexander Dupuy) To: uri@bunyip.com, mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu > The syntax allows for the inclusion of a user name and even a password for > those systems which do not use the anonymous FTP convention. The default, > however, if no user or password is supplied, will be to use that convention, > viz. that the user name is "anonymous" and the password the user's > Internet-style mail address. It's worth noting here that "the user's Internet-style mail address" should consist of a local username, an at-sign (@) and a DNS name for the IP address used on the local side of the FTP control connection. It's an unfortunate reality that the implementors of many "enhanced" FTP servers feel the need to "verify" the address of anonymous FTP clients. Sometimes they are content to call getpeername (and maybe the remote ident server, if any) and log whatever they know, but some insist on the presence of an @ in the password, and one particularly obnoxious FTP server, which I have found running at a number of sites, demands not only the presence of an @, but that any characters following the @ must be a DNS name which resolves to the same IP address as the FTP client. Personally, I find such behavior in an FTP server stupid, pointless, and incorrect, but I imagine that it's extremely unlikely that these FTP servers will ever go away. In any case, it's easy enough to generate a password which all FTP servers will accept, even these ridiculous ones, and it's worth specifying the algorithm for generating such a password in the URL spec. @alex