Testing

Now that a basic user is set up and the FTP server is running, it is time to test that everything works. Open up another command prompt window through Start->Run->command. Type in "ftp" (sans quotes). The prompt should change to ftp>. At this point type in "open localhost". If the server is running there should be a server message that is relayed back along with a prompt for a user name. Enter the username and password when prompted (remembering that they are case sensitive). If there is no prompt, the server is not running and it should be restarted by finding the FileZilla Program Files group and clicking on the Start FileZilla Server icon. If the username password is rejected, double check both the username, password and caps lock. Additional information can be found on the FileZilla Server Interface Window

The next step is to make sure that the contents of the directory can be accessed. This can be acheived by typing "ls" which lists the files in the current directory. If the contents look right then it is alright. Next step will be to actually get a file using the command "get " where filename is one of the files that was listed using the ls command. A Transfer OK denotes that it is working properly. If it works up to this point than the basic FTP server is working. The last thing to do would be to solicit the help of someone not on your computer to see if the ftp server can be accessed through the external IP that we got from What is My IP earlier. If that fails for some reason, it is a router issue and it is time to crack out that manual for the router again. Otherwise, buddy can be pulling files from the FTP server right away.

Advanced Features

Limiting the Number of Users

By default, FileZilla is set up to allow unlimited users. This might not be something that is desirable. There are also options to allow for timeout settings. This is important with a limited number of uesrs - if a connected user is not actively doing something it might be a good idea to have a short time out / transfer value to clear space for others.

Rate throttling is another great feature. Say you just discover a long lost Uncle Bob and he wants to catch up with the last 10 years of pictures. Well you can throttle Uncle Bob and his huge downloads by limiting the rate he can download pictures at so that dear Aunt Rita can get pictures from last week's birthday at a decent speed.

Conclusions

There you have it. Setting up a FTP server is quick and easy especially with a great program like FileZilla. FTP makes distributing many files or large files much more practical than HTTP and is ideal especially for something like distributing digital photos. Questions, comments, concerns? Bring em up in the forum