Fishing the Internet

FTP Looks Arcane, but It Works

File transfer protocol or FTP describes a very common method of accessing a remote computer (FTP site) and copying information (file) from the remote computer to your computer (downloading). It's often faster than downloading from the Web, but certainly not as pretty. Some FTP sites are restricted to registered user, such as university faculty or students, but there are thousands of anonymous FTP sites which are open to the public. When asked to "login" (sign in) to the site, the visitor simply types "anonymous" as the account name.

To search out interesting ftp (file transfer protocol) sites, you might point your browser to ftpsearch.ntnu.no, a Norway-based service which, when we tried it, yielded a list of 50 ftp sites in response to the key word "disability." Many Web sites include indices of related sites, some of which are Gopher servers accessible through the Web.

While working with FTP you may come across Archie and Veronica. Archie, a program similar to Gopher, requires you to know the exact name of the FTP file you want. Veronica is a continually updated database of the names of almost every menu item carried on thousands of Gopher servers. The Veronica database can be searched from most Gopher menus.

The bottom line: The popularity of conducting Gopher searching for FTP sites is declining as the World Wide Web expands. Yet millions of FTP-retrievable files, including full-length books, remain available on the Internet. Some of these files are not available on the World Wide Web, so Gopher searching still has its place in the Internet researcher's tool kit.