FTP
Short for File Transfer Protocol, FTP was first proposed in 1971 for and developed for implementation on hosts at MIT and was later defined by RFC 959 published in 1985. FTP is a standard way of sending and receiving many types of files between two computers. A good example of how FTP is used today is by web developers, who will connect to their web server using FTP and send updated versions of their web pages to the server.
Although many FTP servers require logins many FTP servers also allow anonymous ftp login, which only require a username, often an e-mail and no password. It is also important to realize that FTP is insecure. When your username and password are sent to the server they're both sent as plaintext and could be intercepted and read. If your server supports it we suggest using SFTP or FTP with TLS encryption instead of just plain FTP to help keep your information private.
- A listing of available FTP programs can be found on document CH001247.
- Additional information about setting the rights or doing a chmod to a file through an FTP client can be found on document CH001147.
- See our FTP help page for additional help and support.
Also see: File transfer, FSP, HTTP, Network definitions, Port, Protocol, SFTP, TFTP
