GridFTP is an extension of the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) for grid computing.
[1] The protocol was defined within the GridFTP working group of the Open Grid Forum.
FTP was chosen as a basis for it because of its widespread use, and because it has a well defined architecture for extensions to the protocol (which may be dynamically discovered).
[citation needed] GridFTP integrates with the Grid Security Infrastructure, which provides authentication and encryption to file transfers, with user-specified levels of confidentiality and data integrity, also for cross-server transfers (what FTP calls the File eXchange Protocol, FXP).
GridFTP provides a fault tolerant implementation of FTP, to handle network unavailability and server problems.