Trivial File Transfer Protocol

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Revision as of 18:51, 5 April 2009

Overview

The Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) was developed in 1980 by Noel Chiappa as a simple protocol to transfer files between computers. It is implemented using UDP (Port 69), and is designed to be lightweight (specifically on memory usage) and easy to implement. As such, it is very limited in features compared to other alternatives (FTP, SFTP) as well as security. Due to its lack of security features, it is not safe to use over the open internet, but is still used in private networks as a quick way to transfer files. It is also used to transfer small amounts of data in IP phone firmware as well as in network installations of many current operating systems to load the basic kernel. Windows, Linux and Mac OS all ship with the TFTP server included and disabled by default. The early versions of TFTP were flawed with what was called the Sorcerer's Apprentice Syndrome - causing ever growing packet replication during the transfer.

TFTP has only two features, reading and writing files. It offers no method of listing directory contents, displaying or changing file permissions or even user authentication.

Transfer Modes

TFTP features 3 different transfer modes: netascii, for the transfer of ascii files using 8-bit ascii characters, binary, which transfered binary files byte by byte between computers and mail, which was much like netascii but sent the file to a user rather than to the filesystem. For many years, the protocol allowed transfer of up to 32MB files. This limited transfer size was suitable for its time, however, as most files were small. It wasn't until 1998 in RFC 2347 when option extensions allowed for files up to 4GB which made the protocol more suitable for modern use.

See Also

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External Links

References

--Russeld 14:48, 5 April 2009 (EDT)