What is an FTP server?

Every day we send a lot of information to the Internet. According to Cisco, the global volume of IP traffic by 2021 can reach 3.3 zettabytes, and most of this traffic is somehow stored on servers.

FTP servers just act as a data warehouse, and are one of the simplest and most popular methods of data storage.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, which is a standard network protocol used to transfer files between network nodes, which is located on the same level with the http protocol at the 7th level in the network hierarchy.

FTP servers can be publicly available, without an authorization request, and closed, with a mandatory login and password request.

You can connect to the FTP server either through a file manager, or through any browser, specifying the name of the protocol first, and then the server address. For example, ftp://server.name

While downloading a file, an FTP-server keeps a direct and constant connection with the user. Therefore, the number of simultaneous connections to the server is limited.

To reduce the load off the FTP server, the term "mirroring" is used, that is, several absolutely identical FTP-servers are created, to which users are connected as the load on the main server grows.

However, for the end user, this load balancing may not be noticeable at all.