Behaviour of FTP incase of mls command

General syntax of mls command is as follows:-

mls <RemoteFile>[…] <LocalFile>

Details can be found on the link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff687677%28WS.10%29.aspx

Now when we give multiple remote files/folders to be listed, for each file/folder a separate ftp data connection is opened. So by firing a single command, one can see multiple ftp data connections created. 

 

Normally when a ftp command is fired, only one data connection is made. But in case of mls, multiple connections are created and terminated. So if you provide some command with some correct and some wrong paths, then it will list all the correct paths and provide error message in case of wrong paths.

One can get the pcap file containing such packets at the link provided below:-

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B2XSUdG3GnDmY2M4ZmJhZDgtMGQwYi00NzdmLTg2MzktMTZjMDBjZDI5ZmZh