TFTP Trivial File Transfer Protocol

What is TFTP?

TFTP is a  Simple File Transfer Protocol ) is a TCP / IP protocol suite for simple file transfer between server and client machines and it use the UDP port  69. TFTP is currently defined in RFC 1350. TFTP is designed to be small and easy to implementso it does not have many of the features that the FTP have.

How TFTP works?

In TETP,transmission is starts from a read or write file request, ok the request, if the server approves the request, then server opens the connection, file is send in form of data packets and each data packet length is of 512 bytes. Each data packet has one chunk of data, and must be acknowledged by an acknowledgment packet before the next packet can be sent. If a data packet size is smaller than 512 bytes, then the end of transmission. If the packet is lost during transmission, after a timeout message sender will retransmit the last data packet.

TFTP supports five types of packets, which

  • Read request (RRQ)
  • Write request (WRQ)
  • Data (DATA)
  • Acknowledgment (ACK)
  • Error (ERROR)

Advantage of the TFTP protocol

Although Compared with FTP TFTP functionality is much weaker, but the TFTP has two advantages:

1) TFTP can be used where you don’t haveany  TCP UDP environment;

2) TFTP code share intrinsic than FTP smaller.

While both advantages of the conventional computer is not important, but for those who do not have the disk to store system software TFTP bootstrap hardware device particularly useful.

TFTP protocol the same point with the FTP protocol

We often use FTP and TFTP protocol roughly the same, are used for file transfer between the two computers or between IP devices like IP Phones in the network. TFTP protocol can be seen as a simplified version of the FTP protocol.

Learn about TFTP Vs FTP FTP Vs Cloud

Waqas Azam
Me Waqas Azam and I am a professional blogger & freelance writer. I also working in the IT industry for over 7 years. I am graduated in Computer Science and information technology.