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Chanel's Blog

Hey guy's welcome to the awesomeness of my blog... ahem not really ; ) Basically this blog is for monitoring my progress in my MPI 104 class at Uni!! Enjoy your stay in my world!!

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

FTP

FTP or File Transfer Protocol, is used to transfer files from one computer to another over a TCP/IP based network and allows the files to be manipulated on another computer regardless of the operating system. The objectives of FTP as stated by Wikipedia are as follows:

- To promote the sharing of files
- To encourage indirect or implicit use of remote computers
- To shield a user from variations in file storage systems among different hosts.
- To transfer data reliably and efficiently

While FTP does have its appraisals, it has also incurred a fair share of criticisms. Below are a few of them again as stated by wikipedia:

- Passwords and file contents can be intercepted by eavesdroppers
- while data is being transfered, the control stream sits idle, which poses a problem for larger file downloads because the session times out after lengthy periods of inactiveness.
- while FTP does support the resuming of downloads it is potentially very difficult. One can do this through the REST command.

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