Chapter 4 FTP

 History of FTP


 




1. First Designs

    FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, was original designed to allow groups of people to upload and download files from different machines running different types of operating systems, and allow them to do it easily. The first versions were UNIX based and required cryptic command line entry's to allow them to function.  As time progressed more user friendly versions came into existence and allowed those without the ability to remember archaic UNIX commands to easily move files.  We will see examples of these in "current uses".

2. Current Uses.

Today we use GUI's to access FTP information.  In the following sections I will outline the two FTP tools the University of Oklahoma help desk emphasis.

WS_FTP LE
Netscape Communicator 4.x

    I. WS_FTP LE

        WS_FTP LE is strictly an FTP uploading and downloading tool it does no web browsing.  I will show a picture of this      software but will not go into any explanation since the focus of this web page is Netscape Communicator 4.0x.
 


This is the login Screen:
Most FTP site allow anonymous access to download files

This is the file Transfer screen:


 




although this is a good little program we are going to focus on the uses of netscape.  I will show a couple of pictures as to the look of Netscape's FTP and will go into detail on using it and its parts shortly.
 


This is a typical ftp screen under netscape:


 



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