Discover SmartFTP a complete and free FTP client

This tutorial has the object of discovering an FTP client which will allow you to download and upload files to and from either public or private servers. This could be to update your own website or simply for storage (photos for example).

First of all you will need to download an FTP client.

As a reminder, this is a program that allows you to use the FTP protocol, which means File Transfer Protocol.

As with most protocols, this is based on the client/server model, which means that a computer acts as a server (which will send/receive files) and another that acts as a client (which will connect to the server). So, if you want to share files from your computer, you won’t need an FTP client but an FTP server. You can read more about this in other tutorials that have already been written on the site (they can be found here).

For those of you that just want a client, I recommend SmartFTP, which is a free FTP client for personal use, and which is also IPv6 compatible (see this tutorial for more explanation).

To download this, go to the SmartFTP.com site and download the client by clicking on the Download SmartFTP now link.

Next, install the program and leave the settings as default.

Once this has been installed you can run it and it will look like this:

You can now connect to server, although you will need to fill in some fields first.

Address: Fill in the address of the FTP server to which you want to connect to.

Login: Enter the administrator ID of the server that you want to connect to.

Password: The password that goes with the ID.

Enter the administrator ID of the server that you want to connect to.The password that goes with the ID.

The TCP protocol uses which we call ports. These can be described as communication channels. The FTP server generally listens for clients on port 21. Leave this as 21 except if you have been given a specific port.

The "Anonymous" user allows an FTP client to use the default username and password: anonymous is the username with an email address as the password (this is setup as nose@noset.com when installing the program, except if you have configured it yourself in SmartFTP).

If you are asked to connect to a server as anonymous, then check this box, otherwise leave it as it is.

Press the "Enter" key or click on the button at the top left with the sun.