SSH and Windows

[Patrick Somers]

I am setting up the iSeries to securely transfer files to/from remote W2K PCs. I plan to use SSH with the iSeries being the client. Please advise about what server software is available on the PC side.

Thanks.

[jkennedy]

I use several products depending on need

WS_FTP from http://www.ipswitch.com is a choice that handles both ssh and ftp-ssl.

Is there a reason that you are selecting ssh? It is supported on i with some additional licpgm, but is less common than ftp-ssl.

Joe

[Scott Klement]

FTP over SSL has never worked that well. You suggest that it's less common, but I question that -- I don't know anyone using FTP/SSL except in the IBM i community. Even within the community, I'm not sure it's a majority?

Thing is... FTP/SSL doesn't work well through NAT gateways, and almost everyone is using NAT these days. I suppose you can send your control channel in the clear, but *that* results in losing a lot of security.

When you look at the technological differences between them, SSH is just vastly superior.

[Scott Klement]

You might find this page helpful
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_SSH_servers

[Rocky]

Originally Posted by Scott Klement

FTP over SSL has never worked that well. You suggest that it's less common, but I question that -- I don't know anyone using FTP/SSL except in the IBM i community. Even within the community, I'm not sure it's a majority?

Thing is... FTP/SSL doesn't work well through NAT gateways, and almost everyone is using NAT these days. I suppose you can send your control channel in the clear, but *that* results in losing a lot of security.

When you look at the technological differences between them, SSH is just vastly superior.

Indeed - the state of WY uses FTP over SSL to a PC based server - I do not recall what product they use. We connected to it just fine using FTP over SSL on the AS/400. Worked until they had the invevitable Windows meltdown and had to get it back up. For whatever reason they couldn't get their FTP Server to communicate via SSL after that.

[jkennedy]

Scott - Yes I meant in the i community, not I.T. at large, at least that's my experience. Certainly ssh within other platforms.

If it was through a NAT/Gateway I would probably opt for ssh, or at least not FTP-SSL. There are a lot of ways to do iSeries/PC transfers but they can be quirky with DB2, especially packed fields and the like, so I might select to use a VPN and another transfer method, depending on the need.

Joe