Introduction

• web browsers
• search engines
• chat rooms
• FTP
• images & animation
• regular video & audio
• streaming video & audio
• electronic whiteboards
• MUD's & MOO's
• videoconferencing
• web authoring tools
• push technologies
• site capturing
• intranets

References

File Transfer Protocol (ftp)

The Internet refers to an unimaginably large and complex collection of computers and networks. Although most users find the Internet and the World Wide Web to be synonymous, Internet traffic actually includes data transferred using a variety of different protocols or sets of rules. File transfer protocol (ftp) is the Internet protocol used to move files between computers connected to the Internet; most uploading and downloading occurs using ftp, even when the downloading begins at the web page.

For educators, ftp is most used for uploading files to Internet servers that are maintained by network administrators; the best example is uploading web pages to web servers. Transferring files using ftp requires a server that is configured to accept connections from ftp clients and also a ftp client configured to connect to a specific ftp server installed on the user's computer. Ftp transfers also require special user authentication on the server. Modern applications that must interact with ftp servers (such as blog engines and web authoring software) have ftp clients integrated into the application, so uploading to an ftp server is initiated with a mouse click. Once configured with the assistance of an network administrator, these ftp clients connect to ftp servers with only a password to be supplied by the teacher for each upload.

Resources for ftp:

• FileZilla (Open Source Technology Group, 2006a) is an open source ftp client with an associated ftp server available for Windows computers.