
The biggest is the ability of clients to upload files to the server, assuming that is has been configured to allow them. Other times the files are pages for a web site, uploaded by an FTP client run by the sites owner to a system that runs both the web server and an FTP server.Įven though the FTP protocol has been mostly replaced by HTTP as a method of downloading files, it still has many advantages. Sometimes those files are Linux distribution CD images or RPM packages, downloaded by various clients hosts on the Internet from a large server system that hosts them for everyone to access. Typically, FTP is used to transfer files from one system to another. Essentially, it is a file sharing protocol, but unlike the more common NFS and SMB protocols, it is better suited to use over a slow or high latency network. FTP is designed to allow client programs to read, write and delete files on a remote server, regardless of the operating system that the server is running.

7 Restricting users to their home directoriesįTP stands for file transfer protocol, and along with telnet and SMTP is one of the oldest protocols still in common use on the Internet.
