Ftp: The Educator's Key to Multi-Platform File Transfers

Some educators are eagerly immersed in the world of computer networks, while others have this telecommunications technology thrust upon them. It matters not whether users take to computer networking like a duck to water, or if they are gradually pulled into the current through the enthusiasm of others. The ranks of novice as well as experienced computer-network users are growing exponentially. The Internet users, for example, are lured by the most popular applications--electronic mail, file transfer and remote login.[1] Optimum use of these high-demand network capabilities requires the user to possess file-transfer skills. * ftp and The Internet The Internet is an international computer network connecting millions of academic, military, government and commercial computer users via thousands of computer networks. The file transfer protocol (ftp) application used on the Internet has the following attractive aspects: * It transfers files between computers, regardless of differences in operating systems. * It allows access of individual account(s) by login and the use of passwords. * It allows access of anonymous guest account(s) by login and the use of an Internet e-mail address as the password. (Anonymous login provides restricted access to public directories on the remote computer.) * It uses basic file-oriented commands (such as get, put, list and dir) after login. To use the procedures discussed here, one must have access to the Internet. Educators should check with their computer system administrator to see if their school's network is an Internet node. Techniques discussed in this article will allow users to hunt down and gather files from the Internet for storage on their own computer. Using this approach, it is possible to perform a wide variety of searches to retrieve information. Everything, in one way or another, resides somewhere on the Internet. One can get an ASCII text file of The Three Little Pigs or other public-domain electronic texts from a computer at the University of Maryland, or a list of curriculum ideas on the subject of using the Internet from a computer at the University of Virginia, or a hypermedia software program on John F. Kennedy from Stanford University. Statistics on ftp usage suggest that over 45% of the traffic on the National Science Foundation's Network (NSFNet) is ftp usage.[2,3] It's not surprising that such activity takes place every second on the Internet. The materials are free of charge and the download speeds are usually greater than 56 Kbps (essentially four times the capacity of a 9,600-baud modem). The ftp application permits the retrieval of software, graphical images (including weather satellite images) and documents of interest to librarians, educators, researchers and students alike.[3,4,5] * The Nature of the Internet Aristotle suggested that metaphor was the best way to understand something new and the world of the Internet has inspired many descriptive metaphors. Internet metaphors compare familiar activities and known experiences with the unknown experience of accessing a large computer network. Thus, it is common for the Internet users to figuratively surf the network, spelunk, jack-in or jack-out. It is also possible to either get lost in sub-directory cyberspace or to happily become a seasoned citizen of the electronic frontier. Novice users' biggest difficulty is avoiding getting lost in the hierarchical directories of remote systems or resorting to the use of expletives to cajole the computers. The techniques outlined here will help the novice educator avoid these common pitfalls and learn to mine for Internet treasure. The Internet user should think of himself or herself as a hunter and gatherer. The hunt is for files important to a personal research or educational goal. The file transfer protocol application (ftp) of TCP/IP is the tool that makes it possible to bring home a wealth of useful information in all academic fields. …