While testing file transfers from a workstation behind the company's stateful firewall, you confirm that users can successfully authenticate to an external FTP server but every directory listing and file upload fails when the server is set to active mode. The firewall permits only outbound connections that originate from the internal network and blocks unsolicited inbound traffic. Which technical behavior of active FTP best explains why the transfers are failing?
Active mode attempts to use UDP instead of TCP for the control channel, and the firewall therefore drops the traffic.
Active mode encrypts the data channel with SSL/TLS, causing the firewall to reject the traffic because it cannot inspect the payload.
The client must first open a connection to server port 20, but the firewall blocks any outbound connection to ports below 1024.
The FTP server initiates the data connection from its TCP port 20 to a random high port on the client, so the firewall blocks the unsolicited inbound traffic.
In active FTP the control channel is created by the client to server TCP port 21, but the data channel works in the opposite direction: the server opens a new TCP connection from its own source port 20 to the high-numbered port the client specified in the PORT command. Because this connection is initiated by the external server, the corporate firewall regards it as unsolicited inbound traffic and drops it, preventing directory listings or file transfers. In passive mode the client instead connects out to a port chosen by the server, which complies with the firewall's outbound-only rule, so transfers succeed. The other options are incorrect: FTP never uses UDP for the control channel, SSL/TLS is optional and not inherent to active mode, and the client does not initiate a separate connection to server port 20 in active mode.
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