What is FTP and how do I use it?

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FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is used for transferring files from one system to another.

To use FTP, you need an FTP client. Popular ones for Windows users are WS_FTP and Cute FTP. The programs Anarchie and Fetch are common among Mac users. Windows 95 has a text-based FTP command available at the DOS prompt.

Any FTP client will ask for host. Enter the name of the machine your account is located on, such as aznet.net. Provide your email username and password, Your session will open in your home directory.

Here is an example FTP session from a Unix prompt.

# ftp aznet.net
Connected to aznet.net.
220 vFTP server (Version wu-2.4(6) Sun Oct 6 13:16:00 PDT 1996) ready.
Name (aznet.net:testing): testing
Password (sj.aznet.net:testing):
331 Password required for testing.
230 User testing logged in.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> cd public_html
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> put temp
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for temp.
226 Transfer complete.
42 bytes sent in 0.000362 secs (1.1e+02 Kbytes/sec)
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
total 6
drwxrwxr-x   2 testing  staff        512 Feb  7 11:33 .
drwxr-xr-x   4 testing  staff        512 Jan 13 17:34 ..
-rw-rw-r--   1 testing  staff         42 Feb  7 11:34 temp
226 Transfer complete.
ftp> bye
221 Goodbye.

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