This month's column is written by Vergil Bushnell, OIT Help Desk Consultant.

Does your idea of taking work home involve emailing cumbersome attachments to yourself or stuffing a briefcase full of floppies? Fortunately, there's an easier and more elegant solution.

If you've ever surfed the Web you're probably familiar with Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), a set of standardized rules for the transmission of HTML between a server and your Web browser. File Transfer Protocol, or FTP, is another important (but lesser known) Internet protocol governing file transfers. At UMBC, you can use FTP to shuttle documents from your home computer to your UMBC account, upload HTML files to your web site and remotely access campus Novell servers.

FTP Software

Because FTP is a fundamental, cross-platform protocol, it can be used successfully regardless of whether your computer's operating system is Linux, Windows XP or Mac OSX. FTP programs come in two distinct flavors. You can invoke an FTP session through the command line interface (the MS-DOS in Windows and the Unix bash shell are examples of command line environments) by typing 'ftp' at the prompt.

If you prefer spiffy visual icons and drop-down menus to the spartan, text-only utility of the command line, you're in luck -- many ftp programs use intuitive graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to simplify the process of transferring data. Free graphical FTP clients include WS-FTP (Windows), Fetch (Mac) and gFTP (Linux). Additionally, most decent web authoring programs such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver have built-in FTP capability.

Connecting to a FTP Server

In order to use FTP, you must know the address of the remote server you wish to connect to and have a valid username/password for said server. The logging-in process is straightforward. Let's say a Leonidas Graziano (a hypothetical UMBC student) wishes to upload a resume to his campus computing account. Leo fires up his copy of WS-FTP, enters in the address of the remote server (ftp.gl.umbc.edu), his UMBC username (grazi23) and password in the designated fields and clicks the 'Connect' button.

Connecting With Novell

Establishing a FTP connection to a campus Novell server requires a slightly different procedure. To access your personal ('H' drive) or departmental Novell space ('I' drive), you must have a valid UMBC Novell acount and context. For example, let's say Leonidas' father, Dr. Ajax Graziano (an employee of UMBC's accounting office) is attending a convention at a California college, and needs to download a PowerPoint presentation stored on his Novell departmental drive from his hotel room. The good doctor connects to the hotel's wireless LAN, starts WS-FTP on his laptop, and types in the name of the appropriate Novell server (either 'novell1.umbc.edu' or 'novell2.umbc.edu') in the program's 'Host Name/Address' field. Next, Graziano enters his Novell username and context ('graziano.accounting.administration') in the 'User ID' box, and clicks on WS-FTP's 'Startup' menu tab. The 'Initial Remote Host Directory' field of the 'Startup' menu is used to specify which Novell area (either the shared or user drive) the user wishes to access. Dr. Graziano knows that the user drive is accessed--or "mapped" by default once he connects to the Novell server. Since his document resides in a shared, departmental drive, Graziano types '/shared/dept' into the 'Initial Remote Host Directory,' connects to Novell1, enters his password and quickly downloads the needed file.

If the previous illustration seems complex, detailed step-by-step instructions(including relevant screenshots) on using FTP with Novell are available from OIT'swebsite at http://www.umbc.edu/oit/helpdesk/Novell/ftpnovel.htm

Transferring Files

FTP uses two simple--and aptly named--processes to transfer files, "PUT" and "GET." Put deposits files from a local machine to a remote server, while Get does the opposite. FTP also supports several simple Unix-based commands to navigate and manage remote files and directories.

FTP supports two modes for transmitting information, ASCII and binary. ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) mode should be selected for transferring text-based files--such as documents ending in .txt or .html-- while binary mode is used for other data. Many FTP clients automatically detect which mode is appropriate.

You might find the use of compression utilities such as Stuffit Expander, gzip/tar and WinZip convenient for speeding up FTP file transfers, especially if you're using a relatively slow dial-up Internet connection.

Anonymous FTP

Many software publishers and online information providers run anonymous FTP services to distribute publicly available data. Typically, anonymous FTP servers require you to use the username 'anonymous' and a password of 'guest' (or your email address) before downloading files.

Variations on a Theme

FTP isn't the only method for moving files between terminals in a networked environment. While similar in function to FTP, SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) and SCP (Secure Copy) use SSH encryption to safeguard your information in transit. WinSCP, a freeware Windows SCP program that's included on OIT's PC lab terminals may be downloaded from http://winscp.vse.cz/eng/. NiftyTelnet is a comparable SCP-capable program from the Macintosh, available at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~jonasw/freeware/niftyssh/

More Information

To learn more about using FTP at UMBC, visit OIT's Web site at http://www.umbc.edu/oit, or call the HelpDesk at x53838. If you're curious about the nuts-and-bolts behind the FTP standard, detailed specifications are available from the World Wide Web Consortium at http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc959/