Internet Business Tutorial, FTP-File Transfer Protocol

by Robert H. Fraass on Friday, March 11, 2005
FTP-File Transfer Protocol
Predating the World Wide Web, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is still an often-used standard to transfer files over the Internet.
FTP is text-based (as opposed to a graphical user interface found with the Web) and is often used to copy files from an individual computer to a server, which makes it especially useful for transferring files to a host server when creating a website. FTP software is used to accomplish this, and WS_FTP (http://www.ipswitch.com), Fetch (http://www.fetchsoftworks.com) and Cute FTP (http://www.cuteftp.com) are three of the most-popular FTP software titles available.
Files can also be retrieved from an FTP site, which is often a simple listing of files in a directory, although some newer sites have a web page interface. The URL begins with "ftp://" rather than the ubiquitous "http://".
These sites generally are secured by requiring a username and password to be accessed. Many Internet sites have material stored that can be obtained by the public for free by using FTP software to download it. This is referred to as "anonymous FTP," because the files can be obtained by logging in using the word "anonymous" as the username.
FTP sites are especially useful when transferring memory-intensive files too large to be transferred as files attached to e-mail messages.
NNTP-Network News Transfer Protocol
USENET, the text-based special-interest newsgroups that was an early component of the Internet, uses Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) to allow users to post and read newsgroup messages. NNTP works with newsreader clients that often come bundled with web browsers