ftp

[richards at uiucdcsb.UUCP]

What you are looking for depends on what you want to know about FTP.  If you
are interested in the user level interface, you need to find a document
that is specific to your implementation (such as the "man" page for ftp(1)
for 4.2 BSD Unix, or it's equivalent for Tops-20, etc).

If you are interested in the underlying protocol and capabilities, you are
looking for a document called "RFC-765" (Request-for-comment) written by
John Postel, called "File Transfer Protocol", circa June 1980.  It is available
from the Network Information Center, either by anonymous FTP (chicken-and-egg
problem here, eh?) as file <RFC>RFC765.TXT, or by mailing a request to 
NIC at SRI-NIC.ARPA.  They also publish an index to all the RFCs available.

For most references to using FTP to access files, you have to be connected
via a network (or connected networks) supporting the "internet" protocols
(TCP and IP) to the remote host.  The best known instance of this is the
ARPAnet, although any local area network running 4.2BSD Unix also supports
this mode of communication (along with other vendors OSes, so they don't
feel left out...).  A polling type network such as USENET or CSNET will not
support the FTP protocol, which requires a port (socket) type connection
mechanism to connect/communicate in real-time.

References to "anonymous" FTP means that a particular host which supports the
FTP protocol has a designated signon they have made public (the FTP protocol
requires a remote user to identify themselves just as though they were
logging in to the host) for the general network user community to access
files they wish to make available.  I don't know if more should be said
here about the accepted conventions for signons -- if you have FTP running
and can access ARPA or some other network that has a gateway to the network
the remote host is on, you should contact someone at that host to get more
information on how to proceed.

Paul Richards	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dept of Comp Sci
	UUCP:	{pur-ee,convex,inhp4}!uiucdcs!richards
	ARPA:	richards at uiuc.arpa
	CSNET:	richards%uiuc at csnet-relay