If you've ever tried to share a large number of files over the Internet, you've no doubt noticed that it is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Sure you can use MSN messenger to send things… One file at a time. You could email, but that's slow and limited by the size of your mailbox. Create a website? Doesn't seem worth the effort, and besides what if you want to receive files as well as share them? What if you want to make several directory's worth of your files available to yourself over the Internet while you are traveling? You could use remote desktop software, but that typically has anemic file transfer options and slow performance. What's the solution? Why FTP of course!

What is FTP? FTP simply stands for File Transfer Protocol. As you might guess, it's a method of transferring data over a network or the Internet.

As far as basic operations are concerned, it's very similar to HTTP or Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the protocol that brings you your daily diet of (PCSTATS) web pages. It requires a server to serve the information, and client computers must connect to the server at the correct port, provide the correct credentials and be using software that can understand the data to be transferred.

In the case of HTTP, you use Internet Explorer, or an alternative Web Browser like Netscape or Mozilla. For FTP, you require FTP client software like Bulletproof FTP, WSFTP, or CuteFTP. FTP is the backbone of file transfers on the Internet, but unlike HTTP, it provides a means of allowing clients to upload files as well as download them, and is considerably easier to set up and maintain.

Most businesses that have a need to transfer files maintain an FTP server, and most Web Hosting businesses use FTP to allow their clients to upload the web pages to their servers.

One good way to picture an FTP site is as a section of files and directories on your computer that you choose to publish like a web page, so that anyone with the correct username and password can access the directories and transfer files to and from them. In fact, with the Windows XP FTP client, accessing an FTP server is done through explorer, so the contents of the server appears like just another folder on your system.

The main advantage of FTP is the ease with which it can transfer files over the Internet or your network. Individual files or whole directories can be made available, allowing clients to choose what they wish to access.

Windows XP contains a built in FTP client, used through Internet Explorer, which you can use to access FTP sites as if they were directories on your computer. To do this, you simply need to enter the address of the FTP server into the address bar in Internet Explorer.

Let's take a closer look at a typical FTP address to see what it's made of: FTP://67.68.255.65 (this IP address doesn't exist, so no need to click ;-). This example address simply uses the IP address of the server computer, with the 'ftp://' at the start to inform Internet Explorer that it is looking to connect to an FTP site.