Author:
Lon W. McDaniel
Internet 4 U

FTP


Contents


File Transfer Protocol is a collection of program code that enables your computer to connect to special FTP-computers on the Internet. When you come to one of these FTP-Servers you find a huge library of documents, computer programs, pictures, etc.., and you can take anything you want free of charge!

FTP-programs include simple controls that allow you to download from these FTP-servers.

FTP-servers often have two front doors. One door is for the in-crowd, the people that work with the FTP-computer, people at the same University etc. They are allowed to log in with special (secret) passwords. Once they get in they can access areas of the computer that you are not allowed to see.

The other door is for everybody else and it doesnŽt care who you are. That is why you log in as anonymous. Your user code is usually your E-mail address.

As an anonymous user you are only allowed to access the public parts of the computer. The administrator (he or she in charge of the computer) has been careful to keep you out of the sensitive areas (like the core kernal!).

You might ask: Why do they let strangers in at all? Good question.

More often than not, these are University computers. They want to share their documents with other Universities. (You let me download the Treaty of Paris and IŽll let you download a picture of Mars.) It would be clumsy indeed to administrate log-in codes for many hundreds of thousands of University people, so the easy way is to let anybody (anonymous) log in.

Even businesses have FTP-servers. Microsoft allows you to download new hardware drivers, and bug fixes from theirs. (bugs are small code errors that make your program malfunction. A bug fix corrects that error. All programs have bugs).

If you want to download the latest version of Netscape all you have to do is visit their FTP-server!

No, I donŽt work there, but 85 procent of all Web Browsers in use today are Netscape browsers.

Copywrite © Lon W. McDaniel 1996