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Yes. The original FTP protocol defined in the ARPANET by Abhay
Bhushan of MIT made data connections independent from control connections
in just that way. The original idea was to be general:
specifically, that one could use the control connection to establish a
file transfer between machines unrelated to the client machine.<br>
<br>
This also avoided the need for FTP to multiplex a single stream between
data and control, so that the control connection could operate
asynchronously from data flow, and encoding steps need not be undertaken
to recover from bit errors that would prevent resync'ing at data/control
boundaries.<br>
<br>
More than you wanted to know, probably.<br>
<br>
- David<br>
<br>
<br>
At 01:42 PM 2/26/01 -0500, Oleg Vishnepolsky wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><font face="Arial Narrow, Helvetica" size=2 color="#000080">Why
does FTP protocol has FTP server to connect out to a data port specified
to a client, as opposed to the client connecting to a</font><br>
<font face="Arial Narrow, Helvetica" size=2 color="#000080">port
specified by the server ? Is there a historical reason for doing that
?</font><br>
<br>
<font size=2>Oleg Vishnepolsky<br>
</font><font face="Arial Narrow, Helvetica" size=2 color="#000080">-</font></blockquote></html>