Ideas for alternative to FTP

I would recommend using an FTP client that allows you to resume interrupted transfers. I believe both Transmit and Captain FTP allow this…

Hope this helps

FTP is best for “File Transport”, I don’t know about those websites as you still need to get them there. Clients servers would probably be less stressed then some file storage site. I run my own servers, a collocated one and sometimes one from home. Its nice to be out uploading something and to find it on your HDD when you get home.

There aren’t really any alternatives to FTP… there are fancy packages and some overheard protocols like sftp which is ftp over an encrypted tunnel but ftp is the standard. I suppose you could torrent your assignments… Its possible to setup private torrents but it might be a little strange getting the client to get it on the other end and they could only get it when you were online.

http://cyberduck.ch/

by the way, i told Marina about ur visit :)))...we’re very excited :))...will write u tomorrow…

hugs
b

by the way, lots of the Russian’s used usendit and it worked very well for me when i had to do the projection for them in December:

http://www.yousendit.com/

cheers
b

Your data and, more importantly, your password are sent unencrypted, any person who wants to check in on what you’re sending, and which password you have, can do so with a so called packet sniffer.
FTP doesn’t transfer a file’s date and timestamp, which can be frustrating if you have a large archive you want to search by date.
There’s more, just google it, but this is enough to stop using it I guess.

SFTP is not yet a standard, but it’s much safer, and cyberduck, transmit, etc. all support it. You could also use FTP with SSL if you can’t use SFTP..

Cheers p

I used winscp for windows, its free and does the job. Its built on top of putty a good ssh client. Though I doubt many of you have a need for that…

Also, I switched from fetch to captain FTP – seems more robust, versatile and instead of stupid mangy running dogs has pirate themes.

I lobbied for years to get my work to set it up for us. They finally did it to shut me up. Now I don’t have to use silly systems like ZModem and web-based uploading, it makes a world of difference. I’ve filed from locations where you have only a smidgin of bandwidth – not even enough to load a webpage before the browser times out – but just enough to know you’re online. And here, FTP gets my pictures out. I was in a forrest in Belgium a few months ago, first tried filing via that web based system. Fifty minutes later, no joy, not one had moved. As soon as I switched to FTP – in the same conditions – pictures were moving at a rate of one every two or three minutes.

Sftp/SCP is far more reliable, it is secure and available on most decent operating systems these days.

Daniel – I don’t know what you’re shooting mate, but I am fairly confident the CIA would prefer to spend their time water-boarding than to intercept, packet by packet, my file transmissions. :)

Wade.

This is a huge overstatement. To do packet sniffing one needs to be able to get physical access to a wire on the route of the FTP packets. In practice this means that whoever wants to sniff the traffic needs to be able to listen on the uplink wire of your network, or the wire coming in or out of the relay routers in between your network and the destination network. There are still many people who can do that (the network administrators), but not “any person who wants”.

SFTP is a good option, but not all servers support it, and encrypting the data may mean additional overhead, i.e. you may end up transferring more data with SFTP than with FTP for the same file. For some applications, FTP is a reasonably good solution.

There are other ways to intercept packets, and not to be a scare monger or anything but there are lots of people that aren’t supposed to have access to routers and gateways around the internet that do. Passwords sent in plain text are pretty easy to acquire if they really want them.

The thing keeping you safe is that they have very little reason to be interested in your ftp password.

If I need to use ftp I use passwords which I don’t use for anything else. SFTP does have an overhead but its not major, most of it processing power to encrypt/decrypt on the fly.

Those using FTP should at least make sure they are not using the same user name and password for other purposes (email and such).

Did use it this morning [ftp] with success [70MB], while I failed with FTP Expert 3

The reason for security concerns with FTP are more because of hackers forcing (packet overflows) the FTP servers and then being able to upload rootkits and take over that server to do with as they please.. I have not heard of anyone that has had their ftp upload/download sniffed and compromised. SFTP was a response to the vulnerability of FTP server applications and while better in keeping hackers off the servers it still can be forced. But SFTP has to be available as a protocol from receiving server, not always the case. Having a good client Fetch, Transmit, etc should mitigate active, passive, sftp, ftp as they attempt to connect at best quality session with destination server.

Dropping connections is a function more of line/signal quality than ftp clients or protocol. I would imagine that phone service from australia to europe or usa has 2 possible paths: satellite or undersea cable. Since FTP is a close to peer to peer connection any degradation of the signal or slowness of packets will cause drop connections or slow transfers. I am not sure changing ftp clients will affect that. Speed of connection at sending ending, speed of connection and quality of server at receiving end all factor in. For those interested a traceroute to the destination IP address will tell you how many hops (or routers) your transmission has to pass through. Since Tamara’s FTP was going to France, I would suspect the problem was within France Telecom which in my experience has always been less than reliable from south pacific to europe. (example: a pay phone in Tahiti calls Paris for directory/dialing information)

In addition if you attempt to send photos as photos: tif/jpeg they are NOT being send as a binary package. It is always better to zip an image as the zip process turns an image into a binary file which is much easier packets to send.

Good luck.