A Story of FTP

One day Mickey was sitting on the beach when he saw Minnie coming towards him

Mickey – Hey Minnie, How are you

Minnie – Hmm I am okay Mickey!

Mickey – What happened you look sad?

Minnie – I was reading a book about FTP, but could not understand

Mickey – Hey. Cheer up! I know you understand better with a story

Minnie – Yes, will you tell me one?

Mickey – Do I not always do

Minnie – Great! So here we go

Mickey – Let’s imagine

You are at your office and working with some important documents

Now, it’s the weekend and you have some free time and you want to continue working on the documents that are on your office computer

You are using your personal laptop at home and want to get the files from your office computer

What will be the best way?

Minnie – Well, I can get the documents in a pen drive and carry them home

Mickey – Yes, but you will always have to manually copy the documents in the pen drive carry them home, and then again copy the work from home to office. And sometimes it may not be allowed

Minnie – I can just email or save the documents on my email account

Mickey – Yes, but again we are not working real-time and sometimes there can be restrictions in your office on this

Minnie – Okay, then what should be the best way

Mickey – In case you can setup a secure connection between your office computer and your laptop and can transfer files anytime by connecting to your computer, that will make the process easy, efficient and realtime

Minnie – Yeah, but how to do so

Mickey – Here comes FTP – File Transfer Protocol

Minnie – Okay

Mickey – We need a server and a client

You can install an FTP server on your office computer and set the authorization (password) to access the server and on your laptop, you can install an FTP client

Now you just need to open the FTP client on your laptop and add the server name or id and password to connect to your office system (remote computer) and then you can go into the folders of your office computer and can access the documents

Minnie – That would be great, but what if my office computer is switched off

Mickey – You will need to keep the computer on with the FTP server running

Minnie – Alright but is this secure

Mickey – A very good question, to increase the security now we use SFTP – Secure FTP or SSH File Transfer Protocol. Its a more secure way and is based on Secure Shell (SSH)

Minnie – Okay, so basically FTP allows a way to download files from a remote system

Mickey – Yes, and it can be both the ways download or upload

Minnie – Okay so can I now access my files from anywhere

Mickey – yes, you will need to install an FTP client and should know your FTP server or hostname, port, username, password

Mickey – Can you now think of some practical examples of FTP

Minnie – Yeah, I can now access and download/upload files to and from my office system using FTP

Mickey – Yes, and also when you download some free software or mp3 file from the internet, FTP is can be used there

Minnie – Okay so my system is the client and the original location of the file or software is the server

Mickey – You got it

Minnie – But I did not install FTP client or Server this time?

Mickey – The FTP server is working on the application or website from where you are downloading the files and the FTP client is inbuilt in your browser

Minnie – Wow, now I get it

Mickey – Great

Minnie – Is FTP the only way to transfer files between client and server?

Mickey – No, now there are others, intact we can also use HTTP for this

Minnie – Okay, Mickey, so can I try using FTP, just for practice and fun

Mickey – Why not! You can create an FTP server and access using an FTP client, Try these

https://filezilla-project.org/

https://www.filestash.app/free-ftp.html

https://ftptest.net/