The Interactive Glossary: Defining the Net

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FTP

FTP

This is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol -- a very common method of transferring one or more files from one computer to another. FTP is a specific way to connect to another Internet site to retrieve and send files. One example is when you upload content from your computer to your website hosting provider.

FTP was developed in the early days of the Internet to copy files from computer to computer. With the advent of the World Wide Web, and web browser software, you no longer need to know arcane FTP commands to copy to and from other computers. In your browser, you can use FTP by typing the URL into the location box at the top of your screen. For example, typing ftp://name.of.site/directory/filename.zip transfers the file filename.zip to your computer's hard disk. Typing ftp://name.of.site/directory/ gives you a listing of all the files available in that directory.

If your web browser doesn't have built-in FTP capability, or if you want to upload files to a remote computer, you will need to use an FTP client program to transfer files. To use FTP, you need to know the name of the file, the computer where it resides, and the directory it's in. Many files are available via "anonymous FTP," which means you can log into the machine with the user name "anonymous" and use your e-mail address as your password.