FTP with IPv6

by Maxine Nahman.
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FTP has been designed to work over IPv4 supporting 32-bit addresses. With RFC 2428, "FTP Extensions for IPv6 and NATs," a specification was made that allows FTP to work over IPv4 and IPv6. During the time in which both protocols coexist (and this will be a long time), it is important that FTP servers have a mechanism to negotiate the network protocol that should be used for a session.

The RFC specifies two new FTP commands to replace the PORT and PASV commands from the earlier FTP specification (RFC 959). The PORT command is used in active mode to specify a port different from the default ports used for the data connection. It contains IPv4 address information and therefore cannot be used with IPv6 without modification. The PASV command is used to put the server into passive mode, which means the server listens on a specific data port rather than initiating the transfer. This command includes the host and port address of the FTP server and therefore does not work over IPv6 without modification.

The PORT command is replaced by the EPRT command, which allows the specification of an extended address for the data connection. The extended address specifies the network protocol (IPv4 or IPv6, for instance), as well as the IP address and the port to be used. The EPSV command replaces the PASV command. The EPSV command has an optional argument that allows it to specify the network protocol, if necessary. The server's reply contains only the port number on which it listens, but the format of the answer is similar to the one used for the EPRT command and has a placeholder for network protocol and address information that might be used in the future. The new commands not only accommodate IPv6; they also provide greater flexibility in using FTP through firewalls and NATs (RFC 2428).

The FTP extensions specified in RFC 2428 work with both IPv4 and IPv6. If your FTP implementation supports the new extensions, you are ready to use FTP over IPv6.

We installed an FTP server on our Linux host, Ford. Then we logged into FTP from our Windows XP host, Marvin. In the detail window, you can see the layers. On the MAC layer, the Ethertype is set to 86DD for IPv6. The IPv6 layer specifies a value of 6 for TCP in the Next Header field (not seen in the figure). On the TCP layer, you can see the port number for FTP, 21. Now you know Maggy's password, right? But who is Maggy?

There are other applications such as Secure Copy (SCP) that provide encrypted file transfers, thus protecting your passwords. These are also ready for IPv6 and have been working in the IPv4 world.

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