MAP@ai.ai.mit.edu (Michael A. Patton) (08/18/88)
I thought that this reply to a message sent to the list might be of
use to a fair portion of the readership, so I'm sending it to the
list. If you already know about FTP you may want to just skip over
it. Notations from the original are indented, starting with the
header for reference.
Date: 17 Aug 88 15:10:54 GMT
From: Joseph P. Larson <joe at dayton.uucp>
To: amiga-relay at UDEL.EDU
Re: POPDEMO available on ucbvax in /pub/amiga/ARCED/POPDEMO.ARC
Okay. So I'm dumb. People have been talking about ftp-ing files from
this site or that site for the 2+ years I've been on usenet, but not
ONCE has anyone said what ftp really means nor how I do it.
You're not dumb, you're just on the uucp side of usenet. FTP is an
internet term, although it has come to have general use outside the
specific area for which it was coined. This is in fact a very good
question that many readers on the uucp side of usenet are confused
about.
So finally I'm asking. What's ftp?
FTP is an acronym which stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is the
protocol in the internet family for transfering files from one machine
to another. The protocol has provisions for username/password
authentication and all the associated access control of each of the
participating systems. The internet family of protocols are used on
many LANs (Local Area Networks, the most common is Ethernet) and
several WANs (Wide Area Networks, nationwide [even international]
networks including ARPAnet and NSFnet). The set of interconnected
networks running the internet protocols which includes the ARPAnet and
NSFnet is referred to as The Internet (note caps). All of the
machines in The Internet can talk to all the others and most of them
support FTP. In most cases the program the user runs to access this
facility is itself called FTP.
How does one go about ftp-ing a file from somewhere? Do you need a phone
number and such for the site in question? What would I do if I wanted to
get the POPDEMO as displayed in the subject line above?
Within The Internet a convention has grown up that is referred to as
``anonymous FTP''. This is done by having the FTP server program
specially notice a user name ``anonymous'' and allow (sometimes
restricted) access to a system. It is then standard practice when a
large number of people may want to access something to place the files
on such a system and then the people who want them can pick them up as
needed. All of the standards for the internet protocols themselves
are available this way as well as all the Kermit sources and much
other miscellaneous sources (including PC, CP/M, ADA, UNIX, others).
To get FTP access to a site requires that you be part of The Internet
so you can get a direct connection. Many sites have been
experimenting recently with allowing retrievals via mail so those not
directly a part of The Internet may get them, but the software to do
this is not yet standardized and only a few sites run versions with
different conventions.
-Joe
Mike Patton, Network Manager
Laboratory for Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are a figment of the phosphor
on your screen and do not represent the views of MIT, LCS, or MAP. :-)