File Transfer Protocol

“ It is easy to transfer files over the Internet using a special protocol called FTP. FTP takes the place of programs like XModem or Kermit that may be familiar to you if you use a bulletin board service. Now, you might ask, if FTP transfers a file, what is the differnce between sending E-mail and FTP; why prefer one over the other? ”

“ To beam a file using the File Transfer Protocol. 3. Sometimes used as a generic even for file transfers not using FTP. "Lemme get a copy of "Wuthering Heights" ftp'd from uunet."
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[common; generalized from `kung-fu'] Combining form denoting expert practice of a skill. "That's going to take some serious code-fu." First sighted in connection with the GIMP's remote-scripting facility, script-fu, in 1998.
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FUBAR n. ”

“ A group of bits sent by a modem that comprise a byte of information. (2) A group of bytes sent by a file transfer protocol.
Packet data networks —————————— Also called Packet Switching Networks (PDN) . Value added networks offering long distance computer communications. They let users access a remote computer, by dialing a local node, or access point. The packet data networks use high speed digital links, which can be land lines or satellite communications, to transmit data from one computer to another using packets of data. They use synchronous communications, usually with the X.25 protocol. ”

“ To retrieve the files from a self-extract compressed file, just enter the file's name. To decompress files that have not been made self-extract, you need a utility program. These programs have many names and are available through most bulletin boards.
Transfer problems ————————- Most transfer problems are caused by the communication programs and their (lack of) features. Some Procomm users have problems with the Kermit protocol. Tip: use 8 bit world length and no parity in your program setup. 7 bits and even parity does not always work (on version 2.4.2) . ”

“ Suppose you have a graphics file or a word processing file containing your brochure. How do you send that file to someone?
If you work in an academic environment, it is quite possible that one or the other institutions is an Anonymous FTP site. You may be able to use the Anon. FTP site as a "mailbox" to transfer the file in binary mode— or you could exchange passwords and transfer the file directly, if both have a direct connection to the Internet.
More commonly, you will have to send the file by E-mail. Say you've just finished a brochure and you want to send it cross-country. ”

“ Moving "up" a directory is more system-specific—-in Unix use the command cd .., and in VMS, cd [-] .
get and put
The actual transfer is performed with the get and put commands. To get a file from the remote computer to the local system, the command takes the form:
ftp> get filename
where filename is the file on the remote system. Again using ftp.uu.net as an example, the file newthisweek.Z can be retrieved with
ftp> get newthisweek.Z 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for newthisweek.Z (42390 bytes) . 226 Transfer complete. ”

“ Fancier systems using a bus—like most versions of Ethernet and Corvus Systems’ popular micro network called Omninet—need a file server.
A file server can be a computer minus the keyboard and screen but with extra communications ports to help signals get in and out in a hurry. It’s connected to the hard disk, which stores and relays the electronic files that people send it. In some networks a file server can also be a regular computer simply assigned to the job. ”

“ To decode it, you'll first have to transfer the file message into a file in your home directory. One further complication comes when you request a particularly long file. Many Net sites can only handle so much mail at a time. To make sure you get the entire file, tell the mail server to break it up into smaller pieces, with another line in your e-mail request like this:
size 100000
This gives the mail server the maximum size, in bytes, of each file segment. This particular size is good for UUCP sites. Internet and Bitnet sites can generally go up to 300000. ”

“ Discarded, lost, or destroyed data is said to have `gone to the bit bucket'. On Unix, often used for /dev/null. Sometimes amplified as `the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky'. 2. The place where all lost mail and news messages eventually go. The selection is performed according to Finagle's Law; important mail is much more likely to end up in the bit bucket than junk mail, which has an almost 100% probability of getting delivered. Routing to the bit bucket is automatically performed by mail-transfer agents, news systems, and the lower layers of the network. ”

“ Anything slower than T-1 speed is impractical for files of 1 megabyte or larger (which is likely to be small for a multimedia document) . For instance, even on a 56 Kb line it would take three minutes to transfer a 1-megabyte file. And these figures assume ideal circumstances, and do not take into consideration other users contending for network bandwidth, disk access time, or the time needed for remote display. Current common telephone transmission rates would be completely impractical; few users would be willing to wait the hour necessary to transmit a single image at 2400 baud. ”

“ We are used to thinking of computer systems as having "software" and "hardware", but it is closer to the truth to say that complicated systems like the Internet have many levels—in the case of the Internet as many as seven—ranging from "very software" to "very hardware". Each level has its own set of rules, called its protocol. The TCP/IP protocol belongs to two of the middle levels. ”

“ Modern technology has changed what was once a straightforward issue into a somewhat difficult one, so today's users need to be especially alert when it comes to copying. Generally, any action that transfers a file from one electronic device to another involves making a copy, even if you intend to erase that copy at some point in the future. ”

“ Nowadays, like many operating systems, UNIX hides behind a graphical user interface like the X Windows system. Occasionally—and networking is unfortunately one of those occasions— its quirks like file-naming and directory hierarchy peek through.
This Appendix gives you just enough UNIX to avoid some pitfalls and issue commands needed to transfer files. The basic commands you need to know for any system are how to display directories and list the contents of files, how to name files, and how to get help about the system. ”

“ In addition, the files lent must be controlled in some significant way (e.g., using DRM) that will prevent the patron from retaining perpetual or unrestricted access to the file. Other digital first sale scenarios that involve permanent transfer of files from one party to another, such as sale of mp3s, have struggled with how to effectively implement “forward-and-delete” technology. [124] For libraries lending works, the solution is potentially much easier; lending technology for distribution of licensed e-books is well established. ”

“ The wide-area-networking protocol that makes the Internet work, and the only one most hackers can speak the name of without laughing or retching. Unlike such allegedly `standard' competitors such as X.25, DECnet, and the ISO 7-layer stack, TCP/IP evolved primarily by actually being used, rather than being handed down from on high by a vendor or a heavily-politicized standards committee. ”

“ Using unique IDs helps prevent a system from receiving five copies of an article from each of its five news neighbors, for example.
Further information on how Usenet works with relation to the various transports is available in the documentation for the Cnews and NNTP packages, as well as in RFC-1036, the Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages and RFC-977, Network News Transfer Protocol: A Proposed Standard for the Stream-Based Transmission of News. The RFCs do tend to be rather dry reading, particularly to the new user. ”

“ We find that basic service is limited to the common carrier offering of transmission capacity for the movement of information, whereas enhanced service combines basic service with computer processing applications that act on the format, content, code, protocol or similar aspects of the subscriber's transmitted information, or provide the subscriber additional, different, or restructured information, or involve subscriber interaction with stored information. ”

“ Every process has at least three connections to the outside world. The standard input is one source of the process’s data; the standard output is one place the process sends data; and the standard error is a place the process can send error messages. (These are often abbreviated stdin, stdout, and stderr.)
The words “source” and “place” are intentionally vague. These standard input and output locations can be changed by the user; they could be the screen, the keyboard, a file, even a network connection. ”

“ The Net moves data at phenomenal rates of speed. But that 500,000- byte file that gets transferred to your host system in a few seconds could take more than an hour or two to download to your computer if you're using a 2400-baud modem. Your host system may also have limits on the amount of bytes you can store online at any one time. Also, although it is really extremely unlikely you will ever get a file infected with a virus, if you plan to do much downloading over the Net, you'd be wise to invest in a good anti-viral program, just in case. ”

“ Millions of files are transferred to and from the online services each day. File transfers typically represent over 75 percent of the bulletin boards' utilization time. Downloading free software is still the most popular service. In June 1991, users of my BBS (which has only one phone line) downloaded 86 megabytes' worth of public domain and shareware programs. (86MB equals around 86,000,000 bytes.) In May 1993, users downloaded 108 megabytes distributed over 1,446 files. Add to this the megabytes being downloaded from hundreds of thousands of other bulletin boards. ”

“ How much does the network tolerate mistakes—how crashproof is it? And what about the software? Suppose two people at once are calling up a directory to find out what’s on a common disk. Will the director accurately list every file? Does the network perform well not only with the directory program but with other utility-style software in CP/M, MS-DOS, or whatever operating system you’re using?
How Easy Must the Network be to Use? The WEB is easy but not for the untrained novice. Using the 241Kaypro version, you need to know at least the basic CP/M commands. ”

“ Under this scenario, the regulatory demarcation between basic and enhanced services becomes relatively clear-cut. An enhanced service is any offering over the telecommunications network which is more than a basic transmission service. In an enhanced service, for example, computer processing applications are used to act on the content, code, protocol, and other aspects of the subcriber's information. ”

“ Episode duplicates all inodes and indirect blocks so that it can set a Copy-On-Write (COW) bit in all pointers to blocks that are used by both the active file system and the clone. In Episode, it is important to identify these blocks so that new data written to the active file system does not overwrite "old" data that is part of the done and, therefore, must not change. ”

“ If you get an error, it could be because the FTP site is busy, or because there's a network traffic bottleneck between you and that FTP site, or because the text you're looking for is missing from that FTP site.
Usually, the easiest solution is to choose another FTP site to download your text from. Go to the Search page, choose a different FTP site, and search again for your text.
Tip: You should always try to choose the FTP site closest to you. Not only are you helping to minimize Net traffic by choosing a nearby site, but your file will download faster! ”

“ One of the most difficult and time consuming issues in managing any file server is making backups of file data. Traditional solutions have been to copy the data to tape or other off-line media. With some file systems, the file server must be taken off-line during the backup process in order to ensure that the backup is completely consistent. A recent advance in backup is the ability to quickly "clone" (i.e., a prior art method for creating a read-only copy of the file system on disk) a file system, and perform a backup from the clone instead of from the active file system. ”

“ Aimster's server searches the computers of those users of its software who are online and so are available to be searched for files they are willing to share, and if it finds the file that has been requested it instructs the computer in which it is housed to transmit the file to the recipient via the Internet for him to download into his computer. ”

“ A ‘‘transfer of copyright ownership’’ is an assignment, mortgage, exclusive license, or any other conveyance, alienation, or hypothecation of a copyright or of any of the exclusive rights comprised in a copyright, whether or not it is limited in time or place of effect, but not including a nonexclusive license. A ‘‘transmission program’’ is a body of material that, as an aggregate, has been produced for the sole purpose of transmission to the public in sequence and as a unit. ”