FTP is the classic example of a poorly designed protocol. No network protocol should be relying on the client to be able to open ports to listen on. This behaviour gets broken by NAT and/or any sane firewall ruleset. MSN at least has the option to relay file transfers through the server thus removing the need for open ports on the client. If you are not providing network services then you should not have any listening ports. That was the whole point of the article.

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