The ability to transfer data between computers is central to the inter-networking concept. TCP/IP implements computer-to-computer data transfers thorough FTP (File Transfer Protocol).
An FTP session involves first connecting to and signing on to an FTP server somewhere on the Net. Most public FTP sites allow anonymous FTP. This means you can sign in with the user name anonymous and use your e-mail address as your password. However, some sites are restricted and require the use of an assigned user name and password.
Once in, you can list the files available on the site and move around through the directory structure just as though you were on your own system. When you've found a file of interest, you can transfer it to your computer using the get command (or mget for multiple files). You can also upload files to an FTP site using the put command.
The FTP process was originally designed for text-only UNIX shell style systems. But today, there are many FTP programs available that go way beyond the original FTP capabilities, adding windows, menus, buttons, automated uploading and downloading, site directories, and many more modern amenities.
Individual files on an FTP site are handled according to the way they are defined in your browser's configuration setup, just as though you were browsing a Web site. For example, if you're exploring an FTP site and click the link for a .gif picture file, it will be displayed in the browser window. Text files and HTML encoded files will be displayed too. If you have configured helper applications for sound or video, clicking these types of files will display them using the configured helper applications. Clicking an unconfigured file type will generally bring up a requester asking you to configure a viewer or save the file to disk.
Since you most often want to save files to disk from an FTP site, not view them, you can generally get around all this by using the browser's interactive option to save a file rather than display it. For example, in Netscape you can choose to save a file rather than view it by simply holding down the Shift key before clicking the file's link.
An FTP session involves first connecting to and signing on to an FTP server somewhere on the Net. Most public FTP sites allow anonymous FTP. This means you can sign in with the user name anonymous and use your e-mail address as your password. However, some sites are restricted and require the use of an assigned user name and password.
Once in, you can list the files available on the site and move around through the directory structure just as though you were on your own system. When you've found a file of interest, you can transfer it to your computer using the get command (or mget for multiple files). You can also upload files to an FTP site using the put command.
The FTP process was originally designed for text-only UNIX shell style systems. But today, there are many FTP programs available that go way beyond the original FTP capabilities, adding windows, menus, buttons, automated uploading and downloading, site directories, and many more modern amenities.
Individual files on an FTP site are handled according to the way they are defined in your browser's configuration setup, just as though you were browsing a Web site. For example, if you're exploring an FTP site and click the link for a .gif picture file, it will be displayed in the browser window. Text files and HTML encoded files will be displayed too. If you have configured helper applications for sound or video, clicking these types of files will display them using the configured helper applications. Clicking an unconfigured file type will generally bring up a requester asking you to configure a viewer or save the file to disk.
Since you most often want to save files to disk from an FTP site, not view them, you can generally get around all this by using the browser's interactive option to save a file rather than display it. For example, in Netscape you can choose to save a file rather than view it by simply holding down the Shift key before clicking the file's link.
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