On the internet, if you want to offer a lot of files in a simple way without having to write complex web pages and scripts, you set up a special computer to host an FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, service. The Computer Science department has an FTP server. The CS100 folder on this server is at this address:
This machine is used by Computer Science instructors to provide information to Computer Science classes. There are many such machines around the campus, belonging to different academic and service units.
There are many ways to access an FTP server. You can use a text based UNIX program, a graphical program such as WS FTP, or a web browser. In this class we will only be using a web browser to do something called anonymous FTP access. This is generally the only kind of FTP that is done these days. To learn other ways to use FTP you will have to dig deeper on your own.
So, in yet another effort to encourage the reading of the text to enhance your semantic understanding of the processes involved, read the textbook coverage of the Internet and the Web again.
Most web browsers have some kind of basic FTP support. It is very
simple to access the anonymous portion of an FTP server with a
browser. You simply click a link, or put the URL in the address bar of
your browser and press enter: