GridFTP is a fast secure and robust new transport mechanism; born out a family of a plethora of tools it encapuslates an impressive array of protocols that are consistent with the purpose of the application. The features are manual control of GSI, third party control of data transfer (this aids in consolidating IBM's hpss and LBNL's dpss, Parallel data transfer that is also manually controlable, striped datatransfer, partial file transfer to name a few. The API is a command line interface that calls a tool known as globus-url-copy. I will also talk about other protocol features and benchmark results