Uploading Files

Uploading Files
To upload a file to an FTP server, you must have rights on that server. These rights are assigned on a directory-by-directory basis. To upload a file, log in and then follow these steps:

1. At the ftp command prompt, type lcd to navigate to the directory     on the local machine where the file resides.
2. Type cd to navigate to the destination directory.
3. Set the file type to ASCII or binary.
4. Use the put command to upload the file.


The syntax of the put command is as follows:

ftp>put local file destination file

For example, if you want to upload a file that is called 1.txt on the local server but you want it to be called my.txt on the destination server, use the following command:

ftp>put 1.txt my.txt

You’ll see the following response:

200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for collwin.zip
226 Transfer complete.

743622 bytes sent in 0.55 seconds (1352.04 Kbytes/sec)

TIP:

You can upload multiple files using the mput command. Simply type mput, a space, and then a wildcard that specifies the files. For example, to upload all the text files in a directory, type mput *.txt.

When you’re finished with the ftp utility, simply type quit to return to the command prompt.

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Downloading Files

Downloading Files
After you log in to the FTP server, you’ll navigate to the directory that contains the files you want. Thankfully, the FTP command-line interface is similar to the DOS command-line interface.
This is no surprise since DOS is based on UNIX and FTP is a UNIX utility. Table 4.3 lists and describes the common navigation commands for FTP. Remember that these are also case sensitive.

     After you navigate to the directory and find the file you want to download, you must set the parameters for the type of file. Files come in two types:

• ASCII, which contains text
• Binary, which is all other files

If you set ftp to the wrong type, the file you download will contain gibberish. When in doubt, set ftp to download files as binary files.

TABLE 4 . 3 Common FTP Navigation Commands

ftp>ascii

Type set to A

To set the file type to binary, type binary at the ftp command prompt. Ftp will respond by telling you that the file type has been set to I (binary):

ftp>binary

Type set to I

To download the file, you use the get command, like so:

ftp>get scrsav.exe

200 PORT command successful.

150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for 'scrsav.exe'

(567018 bytes).

The file will start downloading to your hard drive. Unfortunately, with its default settings, the ftp utility doesn’t give you any indication of the progress of the transfer. When the file has

downloaded, the ftp utility will display the following message and return you to the ftp command prompt:

226 Transfer complete.

567018 bytes received in 116.27 seconds (4.88 Kbytes/sec)

TIP:

You can download multiple files by using the mget command. Simply type mget, a space, and then a wildcard that specifies the files you want to get. For example, to download all the text files in a directory, type mget *.txt.

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Starting FTP and Logging In to an FTP Server

Starting FTP and Logging In to an FTP Server
Of the two FTP file operations (download and upload), the ability to download files is the more important skill for a network technician or administrator to master because network and client
operating system drivers and patches are located on FTP servers throughout the Internet. The first steps in starting an FTP download session are to determine the address of the FTP site and start the ftp utility. The FTP site typically has the same name as the website except that the first three characters are ftp instead of www. For example, Microsoft’s website is www.microsoft.com. Its FTP site, on the other hand, is ftp.microsoft.com. We’ll use this FTP site as an example for the rest of this section.
First, start the ftp utility as discussed earlier, and then follow these steps:
1- At the ftp command prompt, type open, a space, and the name of the FTP server as in the following example:

ftp>open ftp.microsoft.com

If the FTP server is available and running, you will receive a response welcoming you to the server and asking you for a username:

ftp>open ftp.microsoft.com
Connected to ftp.microsoft.com.
220 Microsoft FTP Service

User (ftp.microsoft.com:(none)):

TIP:

You can also start an FTP session by typing ftp, a space, and the address of the FTP server (for example, ftp ftp.microsoft.com). This allows you to start the ftp utility and open a connection in one step.

2. Enter a valid username and press Enter.
3. Enter your password and press Enter. 

NOTE:

Most Internet web servers that allow just about anyone to download files also allow the username anonymous. Remember to type the username exactly and to double-check as you enter it because usernames are case sensitive. In addition to anonymous, you can use the username ftp to gain access to a public FTP server. They are both anonymous usernames. Remember that FTP (and UNIX)usernames are case sensitive.

If you are accessing a private FTP server, you should use the username and password given to you by the administrator. If you are accessing a public FTP server with a username such as

anonymous, you can use your e-mail address as the password.

TIP:

You don’t have to enter your entire e-mail address to log in with the anonymous username. Most FTP server software doesn’t verify the actual e-mail address, just that it is, in fact, an e-mail address. To do this, it checks for an @ sign and two words separated by a period. You just need to enter a very short e-mail address to bypass the password (like u@me.com). This is especially helpful if you have a long e-mail address. It’s also more secure if you don’t want lotsof junk e-mail.

If you enter the wrong username and/or password, the server will tell you so by displaying the following and leaving you at the ftp command prompt:

530 Login Incorrect

Login failed.

You must now start over with the login process. If you are successful, the FTP server will welcome you and drop you back at the ftp command prompt. You’re now ready to start uploading

or downloading files.

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Using The File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

Using The File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
From Chapter 3, “TCP/IP Fundamentals,” you know that File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a subset of TCP/IP and that FTP is used during the transfer of files between UNIX boxes. In recent
years, FTP has become a truly cross-platform protocol for file transfer. Because the Internet, and thus TCP/IP, use has skyrocketed, almost every client (and server) platform has implemented FTP. Windows is no exception. Its TCP/IP stack comes with a command-line ftp utility. To start the ftp utility, enter ftp at a command prompt. The result is an ftp command prompt:

ftp>

From this command prompt, you can open a connection to an FTP server and upload and download files as well as change the way FTP operates. To display a list of all the commands you can use at the ftp command prompt, type help or ? and press Enter. To get help on a specific command, type help, a space, and then the name of the command. 
     In the following sections, you will get an introduction to uploading and downloading files because every network technician and administrator needs to know how to do this. As they come up, the specific commands necessary to perform those two operations will be discussed, as well as commands that relate to those processes. But first, let’s look at how to start the process.

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The –s Switch

The –s Switch
As with the –A and –a switches, the lowercase –s switch is similar to its uppercase sibling. The nbtstat –s command produces the same output as nbtstat –S except that it tries to resolve remote host IP addresses into host names, if possible. Figure 4.10 shows sample output from the nbtstat –s command. Note the similarities between Figure 4.10 and Figure 4.9.

FIGURE 4 . 1 0 Sample output of the nbtstat –s command

NOTE:

As you can do with the netstat command, you can place a number for an interval at the end of any nbtstat command to indicate that the command should execute once every so many seconds (as specified by the number) until youpress Ctrl+C.

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The –S Switch

The –S Switch
You use the -S switch to display the NetBIOS sessions table, which lists all the NetBIOS sessions, incoming and outgoing, to and from the host where you issue the command. The –S switch displays
both workstation and server sessions but lists remote addresses by IP address only. 
     Figure 4.9 shows sample output of the nbtstat –S command. The NetBIOS name is displayed along with its hex ID. The state of each session is also shown. An entry in the In/Out column determines whether the connection has been initiated from the computer on which you are running nbtstat (outbound) or whether another computer has initiated the connection to this
computer (inbound). The numbers in the Input and Output columns indicate (in bytes) the amount of data transferred between this station and the station listed in that entry.

FIGURE 4 . 9 Sample output of the nbtstat –S command

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The –R Switch

The –R Switch
The -R switch is the exception that proves the rule because it has nothing to do with the –r switch. Let’s say that you have a bad name in the NetBIOS name cache but the right name is in the
LMHOSTS file. The LMHOSTS file contains NetBIOS names of stations and their associated IP addresses. Also, the cache is consulted before the LMHOSTS file is. The problem here is that the bad address will be in the cache (until it expires). To purge the NetBIOS name table cache and reload the LMHOSTS file into memory, simply use the nbtstat command with the –R switch, like so:
nbtstat –R

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The –r Switch

The –r Switch
This switch is probably the most commonly used switch when NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NBT) statistics are checked. The –r switch displays the statistics of how many NetBIOS names have been
resolved to TCP/IP addresses. Figure 4.8 shows sample output of the nbtstat –r command.
     As you can see, the statistics are divided into categories. The first category is NetBIOS Names Resolution and Registration Statistics, which shows how many names have been resolved or registered either by broadcasts on the local segment or by lookup from a WINS name server. The second category gives the NetBIOS unique and group names and their associated hex IDs that were resolved or registered. In Figure 4.8, the output shows that no WINS server is operating, so all NetBIOS names were resolved by broadcast only. This is evident from the lack of statistics of names resolved by a name server.

FIGURE 4 . 8 Sample output of the nbtstat –r command

NOTE:

The –r switch is useful in determining how a workstation is resolving NetBIOS names and whether WINS is configured correctly. If WINS is not configured correctly or is simply not being used, the numbers in the Resolved by Name Server and Registered by Name Server categories will always be zero.

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The –n Switch

The –n Switch
You use the –n switch to display the local NetBIOS name table on a Windows device. The output (shown in Figure 4.7) is similar to the output of the –a switch, except that instead of displaying
the NetBIOS name table of another host, you are displaying it for the machine on which you are running the command.

FIGURE 4 . 7 Sample output of the nbtstat –n command

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The –c Switch

The –c Switch
The function of the –c switch is to display the local NetBIOS name cache on the workstation on which it is run. Figure 4.6 shows sample output of the nbtstat –c command.

FIGURE 4 . 6 Sample output of the nbtstat –c command

Each entry in this display shows the NetBIOS name, the hex ID for the service that was accessed, the type of NetBIOS name (unique or group), the IP address that the name resolves to,
and its Life (in seconds). The Life amount dictates how long (in seconds) each entry will live in the cache. When this time expires, the entry is deleted from the cache.

NOTE:

If you run nbtstat to display the cache and you get the result “No names in the cache,” all entries in the cache have expired. This will happen often if you don’t regularly access machines or services with NetBIOS names.

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The –A Switch

The –A Switch

The –A switch works exactly as the –a switch and produces the same output; only the syntax of the command is different. First, you use an uppercase A instead of a lowercase a. Second, you
use the IP address of the host whose NetBIOS name table you want to view instead of the Net- BIOS name. The syntax includes the nbtstat command followed by the –A switch and finally the IP address of the host whose NetBIOS table you want to view:

nbtstat –A 199.153.163.2

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The –a Switch

The –a Switch
The –a switch displays a remote machine’s NetBIOS name table, which is a list of all the Net- BIOS names that that particular machine “knows about.” The following command produced
the output for the server S1 shown in Figure 4.5:

nbtstat –a S1

FIGURE 4 . 5 Sample output of the nbtstat –a command

TABLE 4 . 1 Last Byte Identifiers for Unique Names

TABLE 4 . 2 Last Byte Identifiers for Group Names

As you can see, using this switch produces an output with four columns. The Name column gives the NetBIOS name entry of the host in the NetBIOS name table of the remote machine.

The next column displays a unique two-digit hexadecimal identifier for the NetBIOS name. This identifier represents the last byte of the NetBIOS name shown in the Name column and is necessary

because the same name might be used several times on the same station. It uniquely identifies which service on the host the name is referencing. Tables 4.1 and 4.2 list the hexadecimal

identifiers for unique and group host names. 

      The Type column refers to the type of NetBIOS name being referenced:

• Unique NetBIOS names refer to individual hosts.
• Group names refer to the names of logical groupings of workstations, either domains or workgroups.

The Status column refers to the status of the NetBIOS name for the specified host, regardless of whether the name has been registered with the rest of the network.

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