FTP - Welcome to Software Paradise

While taking a computer science course at The University of Western Ontario, I found out that the terminals we used for our assignments were connected to the Internet, whatever that was. At the time, (we're talking mid-1980's) all I knew about the Internet was that it was global; e-mail was a big part of it; and somehow you could get access to an incredible amount of software with something called "FTP".

Well, that did it for me. I just had to find out more about this "FTP" thing - and I did. Here's the scoop ...

FTP - File Transfer Protocol

It is one of the oldest Internet tools, right up there with telnet. In fact, until about 1995, it was responsible for the highest volume of traffic on the Internet.

As the name implies, it is used to transfer files. With univer- sities, the military, and research facilities being the biggest users of the Internet, there had to be a way to get files from one computer to another quickly and safely. FTP was developed to meet this need.

At about the same time, another phenomenon appeared called the "anonymous FTP site". These were archives of software, both freeware and shareware, that anyone could access and download. I thought there was a lot of software available on the BBS scene, but the amount available on these FTP sites just blew me away. It seemed as if there were whole mainframes dedicated to archiving and cataloguing software. And someone (or some people) had to be maintaining them - usually on a volunteer basis! Anonymous FTP sites were usually at a university.

The best known archive I found was the SimTel20 (Simulated Intelli- gence) site, which was maintained on a U.S. military computer at the White Sands Missile Range, in White Sands, New Mexico! To this day I have never been able to figure out why the U.S. military would allot so much hardware and time to maintaining a huge repository of software it didn't own.

Today, the archive is still available at Simtel.Net, which is now a private site belonging to Walnut Creek CDROM. On September 30, 1993 the collection was removed from the military computer due to security precautions. Keith Petersen was the original maintainer, and is still running the site for Walnut Creek CDROM.

IT'S STILL ALIVE!

FTP is still the best way to move files around on the Internet. In fact, you may even have used FTP without knowing it, while surfing the Web in your browser. Next time you're on the Web, and land on a link that says something like "Download now", check out your browser's information status bar. It might surprise you.

There are thousands of documents and programs on the Internet, and a lot of them are available only with FTP. One of the lesser-known uses of FTP is to get updates on various drivers for your hardware. Most of the major hardware and software manufacturers have an FTP site which you can go to to get solutions to problems, upgrades, and patches. New versions of drivers, say for your sound card, video card, or printer, are also available. Many of them use FTP as the method of transfer to your computer.

HOW CAN I TELL WHEN TO USE FTP?

You may read a reference to a document such as "Download this file by anonymous ftp at some.place.on.thenet and get Thisfile.Doc in the directory /pub/files". Or you may see something like this: "The URL for this file is: ftp://some.place.on.thenet/pub/files/Thisfile.Doc".

Both of these methods are talking about the same file. The first way assumes you have a separate FTP program (client) such as WS-FTP or even access to a Unix prompt. By running the FTP program and telling it to connect to the site "some.place.on.thenet" as an anonymous user, then changing to the "/pub/files" directory, you should finally see a file called "Thisfile.Doc". You can now select that file, and have it transferred to your computer.

The second method is when you are in your Web browser. Select the option to "open" or "goto" a new site, then type in the URL, exactly as given. Don't forget - it's "ftp://" not "http://".

WHAT IS THIS "ANONYMOUS" STUFF?

The computer that contains an FTP archive has to have some way to allow users to gain access to the files - and ONLY the files available for public download. In order to allow anyone to log in to the computer, a special account is created called "anonymous". This is just like logging in to your local Internet account, except it's on a different computer. You log in as a user called "anony- mous" and when asked for your password, you send your e-mail address.

Once you are logged in, you can move around a bit in different directories, and download a file you want to your computer.

There is an "Anonymous FTP FAQ" posted to news.answers and comp.archives which lists the current active FTP sites. Be warned that it is a mult-part posting, meaning it is broken up into numerous postings because of its size. There are thousands of anonymous FTP sites on the Internet.

HOW DO I START AN FTP SESSION?

Browser

If you have a Web browser (and who doesn't) you can access an ftp site while running your browser. As mentioned above, when you see a reference to a URL that looks something like

"ftp://some.place.onthe.net"

you can type that in as the address to "goto" or "open". The browser will automatically log you in as an "anonymous" user. Once there, you will notice quite a difference compared to other "pages" you've seen on the Web. There will be no graphics, and the content will be a list of files and directories. Move to other directories by clicking or selecting the appropriate listing. Once you find a file you want, selecting it will usually start the transfer to your computer. (I say "usually" since this article is generic - some browsers do things differently.)

GUI Client (Graphical User Interface)

Another way is to get a dedicated program, or client, to do FTP. Just as you have a separate program for e-mail, there are several FTP programs available, and for different operating systems. A popular one for Windows folks (both 3.x and 95) is WS-FTP. It can be found at the Ontario TUCOWS mirror site:

idirect.tucows.com

This way of running FTP is very easy and mostly painless.

Command Line (Text)

If you have Windows 95 you already have an FTP program! It is a text-based version granted, and has to be run from a DOS window, but it works just fine. Log into your Internet account the way you normally do, then open a DOS window and enter the command "ftp" from the prompt.

If you have access to a Unix prompt, just enter the command "ftp".

FTP CONCEPTS

Before getting into the actual FTP commands, we should cover a few basic concepts. Downloading is the process of transferring a file from some computer to yours. Uploading is just the opposite - transferring a file from your computer to another one.

As far as FTP is concerned there are only two types of files: binary and text (also known as ASCII). ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Every computer under- stands ASCII.

Finally, remember that you are browsing around the file system of a remote computer. It is probably a Unix machine and laid out as a hierarchy, so if you are familiar with the DOS or Unix file / directory structure you'll feel right at home. For you Windows users, don't give up - there's still hope for you :-)

BINARY !? ASCII !? HUH?

When transferring file/s with FTP you should try to determine whether the file you wish to transfer is binary or text, since you must set the FTP program into the right "mode". Some FTP programs are set in binary mode by default, others in text. If you aren't sure what the file type is, set the mode for binary. This way, even if a file is text, it will still transfer without any problems. However, if you transfer a binary file in text mode, it will be useless - don't even try to use it.

Text files are files that contain .... wait for it .... TEXT and text alone. That means it contains only those characters that can be produced by typing the alpha-numeric keys on the keyboard. A document created in a word processor is NOT a text file, unless you have chosen the option to save it as a text file. This strips out all the formatting codes (bold, underline, etc) that are part of the document, but aren't visible. Many applications have an EXPORT or SAVE AS feature that allows you to save a document as text or ASCII.

Some examples of text files include:

.Z (Unix compressed file)

FTP COMMANDS (Entered at the "ftp" prompt)

quit	exit the ftp program
help [command]	show help for [command]
open	connect to
close	disconnect from current host
user [name][pass]	login as [username] with [password]
cd	change directory to
cdup	move up one directory level
lcd	local change directory
dir [directory][file]	list contents of [directory]
pwd	print working directory (where am I?)
binary	set transfer mode to binary
ascii	set transfer mode to text
get	download remote filename to local filename. get a.long.file.name short.fil
hash	toggle hash mark (#) printing during transfer
prompt	toggle interactive mode for mget / mput.
mget	transfer multiple files, ie mget *.doc *.txt *.asc
mput	upload to remote system

HEY ARCHIE, WHAT'S NEXT?

A conspicuous absence from this article is any mention of how to actually find a file in the thousands of anonymous FTP sites. Surely there's a search engine for this? You bet, and it's called Archie. While many Internet applications and utilities are acronyms standing for something else, Archie is an exception. But true to the Internet mind-set, it is "archive" without the "v".

This will be the topic of another article in this series, as will be more about file compression and computer viruses.

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Amer Neely