What is a FTP Site:
You will learn here about FTP sites Introduction, File Transfer Protocol guide, http, https, secure sites, active mode, passive mode communication and encryption methods. FTP (File transfer protocol is a most secure way to transfer the files over the internet. The most common and simple use of the FTP is to download the files from the internet. All internet users, by this way or other use the FTP whether they know it or not. FTP is acts as the backbone of the music, games, files, movies, images and other documents download.
When you are downloading a file or data in the form of the docs or any other format, you are actually transferring the file to your computer from another computer over the Internet. You can also know the exact physical location of the serves from where you are downloading the files but you normally know the web addresses of the ftp or http websites.
An FTP address start with this prefix ftp: // while on the other hand an http address stats with this prefix http://.
A computer that gives ftp access establishes a FTP connection. A computer that is served to host the websites is known as web server similarly a computer that establish a ftp connection known as ftp server or it is also called a ftp site.
FTP site is like a large filing cabinet. As the files are properly organized in the filing cabinet and a proper name and label can be placed on the files just like same ftp files are also properly organized and named on the ftp server.
To connect to the ftp sites three things are required ftp server ip address or host name, user id and password. By providing these three things a user can be connected to the ftp sites and can download or upload the files. The administrator of the FTP sites controls the levels of the access like read only, write or full control.
When you download anything from the Internet, you are anonymously connected to the FTP with a anonymous user id. To make a FTP connection you have to use a web browser or a FTP client software like cuteftp, wsftp or aceftp. AceFTP can be get as free.
If you want to transfer the large files then you have to use the FTP clients because web browsers are not recommended to use in this scenario. If your work is of secure name like medical transcription data or any other thing then you should use the secure FTP connections with the capabilities of 64-bit SSL encryption methods. Many FTP clients have the resume features, which mean if you data is not properly uploaded or downloaded due to any reason then you can resume the connection from where it was broken. You don’t need to start the transfer again from the beginning.
What is an FTP Client?
An FTP client is a software that is designed to transfer the files over the Internet. You will have to Install it on your computer and then configure the FTP sites separately with the IP address, username and password given by the FTP hosting company. Normally a FTP client software is split into the two panes left and right. The left pane displays the files and folders of your computer and the right pane shows the files and folder of your FTP site over the Internet. Files are normally properly organized on the FTP server.
With the FTP client software the file transfer is very easy and you just have to drag and drop the files from the one pane to another. You can also transfer the file by highlighting it clicking the left or right arrow.
There are certain other features in the FTP clients software like resume feature, multiple file transfer feature, scheduling feature (automatically checks the files to be uploaded or downloaded from the client side), queuing utility, synchronize utility and the scripting utility.
Understand How FTP works.
The FTP (file transfer protocol) is used to transfer the files between the host computers. FTP works on the principal of client/server.
If you have connected to the FTP server using the Active mode you must configure your firewall in such a way that it must accept all the incoming Internet connections. Most internet service providers block the ports above 1024 because this port is used by most of the FTP clients. You can simply change the status of the FTP from the Active mode to the passive mode and then connect to the FTP server because most FTP server usually supports the passive mode.
FTP Communication: Once a connection is established between your computer and the remote computer then you can easily transfer the data in the form of files or folders or any other. In a FTP session the following two connections are made.
• The control connection is established in the form of client/server. In this scenario, the server listen to the port 21 and waits for the client connections. The client opens a port above 1023 to the server’s port 21. In this way, the client sends the commands to the server and gets the reply from the server. This connection is last as long as the FTP session is established.
• The data connection is used to transfer the data between the local and remote computer (client/server). New data connection is opened for each command sends by the client to the server. The data connection opened depends on the types of the FTP session i.e Active session or Passive.