11 - FTP Software TCP/IP Internetworking Products

Abstract

This chapter discusses FTP software TCP/IP internetworking products. During the early 1970s, computer users in the research community were often hampered by an inability to exchange necessary and vital information among diverse computer systems. At that time, networking technology was in its infancy, with the few network sites in existence located at universities and military installations. Recognizing the need for more advanced connectivity, the U.S. Department of Defense sponsored development of transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP), a protocol suite that allows communication among diverse computers running different operating systems. While it proved to be a viable solution for the research community, TCP/IP protocols were not widely available until the early-1980s. The standardization of Ethernet offered low-cost, easy-to-use connections and led to an abundance of networking sites in corporations all over the world. At the same time, the release of the Berkeley-based Version of UNIX included TCP/IP, allowing wider use of the technology. After TCP/IP technology gained acceptance from users of large computer systems in research and university environments, a group of programmers at the Massachusetts institute of technology (MIT) created an experimental program called PC-IP, to allow MS-DOS computers to use TCP/IP to communicate with other computers.