Whether we know it or not, several of us have already used the file transfer protocol to share files on the Internet. One of its most common applications is in downloading a file from a website. For example, while downloading the pdf file in the previous section, we made use of this protocol. FTP, hence, is behind many of the recent developments in the online world like the MP3 music sharing and video viewing over the Internet.
An FTP site:
An ftp site is a location on which files are stored for sharing and download. Mostly, it is a location on a central server, like that for a website, to which computers can connect to access and modify files. For example in order to modify the HTML file corresponding to this Web page, I need to connect to this website’s host server using the FTP. In order to connect to an ftp site, we need two details:
- An FTP site address, which looks something of this form: ftp.the-online-world.com
- A username and password to access the site.
On many occasions, username and password are not required and the computers may connect using a log-in type called Anonymous log-in. Anonymous log-in may have limited permissions for accessing the content of the site, as decided by the site’s administrator. For downloading files from Internet, many times we use the anonymous log-in without actually realizing about it.
FTP clients:
An FTP client is software which allows you to connect and modify files on an ftp website. It needs to be installed on the remote system for this purpose. Some of the common ftp software in use today are GFTP, Filezilla, SmartFTP, CuteFTP etc.