anonymous FTP

anonymous FTP

[ə‚nän·ə·məs ¦ef¦tē′pē]

(computer science)

A public FTP (file transfer protocol) site at which users can log in and download documents by entering “anonymous” as their user ID, and their e-mail address as password.

anonymous FTP

(networking)

An interactive service provided by many Internet hosts allowing any user to transfer documents, files, programs, and other archived data using File Transfer Protocol. The user logs in using the special user name "ftp" or "anonymous" and his e-mail address as password. He then has access to a special directory hierarchy containing the publically accessible files, typically in a subdirectory called "pub". This is usually a separate area from files used by local users.

A reference like

ftp: euagate.eua.ericsson.se /pub/eua/erlang/info

means that files are available by anonymous FTP from the host called euagate.eua.ericsson.se in the directory (or file) /pub/eua/erlang/info. Sometimes the hostname will be followed by an Internet address in parentheses. The directory will usually be given as a path relative to the anonymous FTP login directory. A reference to a file available by FTP may also be in the form of a URL starting "ftp:".

See also Archie, archive site, EFS, FTP by mail, World-Wide Web.

anonymous FTP

An FTP site on the Internet that contains files that can be downloaded by anyone. The anonymous FTP directory is isolated from the rest of the system and will generally not accept uploads from users.