FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol.
Essentially it is a simple tool to move files from one computer to another
computer. There is no difference in copying a file on your computer and
copying a file on another computer, as the mechanics are the same in each case.
FTP is simply a tool to allow copying files over a Internet style network.
The well known port for FTP is port 21.
How would FTP work for me?
Lets assume that you have created a web site
for yourself, and you have seventy-five web pages that you want to display to
people. Instead of copying all of the files to disks and manually placing the
files on the web-server, you could open an FTP client, find the web-server,
navigate to the directory where you need to place the files, and then upload the
files.
Thus, FTP is simply used
- to download a file from a server using the
Internet, or
- to upload a file to a server (e.g.
uploading a Web page file to a server).
