RFC 1350

Network Working Group
Request For Comments: 1350
STD: 33
Obsoletes: RFC 783

K. Sollins
MIT
July 1992

Status of this Memo

This RFC specifies an IAB standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "IAB Official Protocol Standards" for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Summary

TFTP is a very simple protocol used to transfer files. It is from this that its name comes, Trivial File Transfer Protocol or TFTP. Each nonterminal packet is acknowledged separately. This document describes the protocol and its types of packets. The document also explains the reasons behind some of the design decisions.

Acknowlegements

The protocol was originally designed by Noel Chiappa, and was redesigned by him, Bob Baldwin and Dave Clark, with comments from Steve Szymanski. The current revision of the document includes modifications stemming from discussions with and suggestions from Larry Allen, Noel Chiappa, Dave Clark, Geoff Cooper, Mike Greenwald, Liza Martin, David Reed, Craig Milo Rogers (of USC-ISI), Kathy Yellick, and the author. The acknowledgement and retransmission scheme was inspired by TCP, and the error mechanism was suggested by PARC's EFTP abort message.

The May, 1992 revision to fix the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" protocol bug [4] and other minor document problems was done by Noel Chiappa.

This research was supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense and was monitored by the Office of Naval Research under contract number N00014-75-C-0661.

Table of Contents

• 1. Purpose
• 2. Overview of the Protocol
• 3. Relation to other Protocols
• 4. Initial Connection Protocol
• 5. TFTP Packets
• 6. Normal Termination
• 7. Premature Termination
• I. Appendix
• References
• Security Considerations
• Author's Address

• Original text document
• Complete HTML RFC (TAR, TGZ, or ZIP format)