Internet Accounting

Using the Web Browser FTP Feature to Transfer Files

If you use FTP to download files, you can save money by using your web browser and the proxy server.

The Web Proxy Server works with two Internet protocols:

HTTP - The most common protocol used to retrieve Web pages or files on the World Wide Web.
FTP - Another older protocol used to transfer files.

If you need to download a file using FTP, you can almost always use your web browser. For example to get a file called getme.zip from a site called ftp.somesite.com in a directory called /pub/goodstuff/, enter the following URL in your web browser:

ftp://ftp.somesite.com/pub/goodstuff/getme.zip

You can also browse FTP directories, e.g. to list all files in the /pub/goodstuff directory use:

ftp://ftp.somesite.com/pub/goodstuff/

For non-anonymous FTP, you can place the username in the URL like this:

ftp://myusername@ftp.somesite.com/home/mystuff/

and you will be prompted to enter your password.

The advantage of using the proxy for FTP downloads is that the file may already be in the cache. If it is it will download extremely quickly and at no cost to you. There are also other ftp clients that can be configured to use a proxy server in the same way as a browser does. Refer to the documentation for your favourite ftp client.

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