- The vendor relationship requires data exchange, and Amazon prefers that you use Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to exchange data with them.
- EDI is an industry standard for transferring data between computer systems or computer networks.
- EDI over the Internet (EDIINT) is a working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that is chartered with creating specifications for transporting EDI or XML documents over the Internet in a secure, highly reliable manner.
- Amazon defines secure as digitally signed and encrypted.
- Amazon trading partners each get a dedicated AS2 server configuration for electronic data exchanges with them.
- AS2 is the preferred method, but if you cannot use AS2, FTP is an acceptable alternative.
- The Amazon FTP address is ftp.amazonedi.com.
- This site is free of charge, and each vendor receives a proprietary user account and password for uploading files. Amazon sends and receives data from the FTP site every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. The Amazon FTP server:
- Only supports passive mode connections. Amazon has noticed that Windows command line FTP does not support passive mode and does not recommend using batch scripts with Windows built-in FTP.
- Is set in a LINUX environment and if you are sending data over a mainframe, element separators and segment terminators may not be compatible with Amazon's system. Please consult with your EDI coordinator if you are working in a mainframe environment.
- Makes a file available only after is it is fully uploaded, so Amazon does not require a staging mechanism (to indicate when a file is ready) . If you choose to use a staging mechanism to support legacy scripts, all staging activities (such as renaming a file) should be completed in the same session the file was uploaded.
9. Note: A list of common FTP clients is provided below; this is not intended to be an inclusive list, and Amazon are unable to offer support for any of these clients:
¶ Requirements and Settings
- There are several requirements to consider during Amazon FTP setup:
- You need a script or client application that connects your EDI system with Amazon's FTP site.
- For your firewall settings, if you filter your network traffic by IP ranges or port, you will need to configure the following IP addresses to have access to your systems:
- 107.21.95.192/27 subnet 255.255.255.224
- 107.21.95.224/27 subnet 255.255.255.224
2. Amazon requests that documents are not wrapped to any particular character length (this occurs with mainframes).
3. Wrapped documents should be sent to Amazon as one continuous stream of data.
4. If you use a carriage return as a terminator (for example, PUBNET format), wrapping is not an issue.