Chapter 21. FTP, SSH, VPN & Web Sharing

Email and web surfing may be the most popular Internet activities, but the world’s most gigantic network has many other uses. The general idea is always the same, though: letting one computer reach out and touch another.

MacOS offers a few features that embrace the more literal aspects of that notion. For example, this chapter explores various advanced methods of manipulating your own Mac from the road, including remote access technologies like long-distance file sharing, FTP, SSH, and virtual private networking (VPN).

FTP

FTP (file transfer protocol) sites store pieces of software that can be accessed from the Internet. If you’ve heard of FTP at all, it was probably under one of two circumstances—either you’ve downloaded software from an Internet FTP site, or you’ve created and maintained your own website.

Uploading and Downloading from FTP Sites

Hooking into an FTP site generally requires an FTP client program that runs on the kind of computer you use (Mac, Windows, or whatever). On macOS, popular FTP client programs include the shareware programs Transmit, Fetch, Interarchy, and Captain FTP, and the free RBrowser (which is available from the “Missing CD” page at www.missingmanuals.com).

Using these programs, web designers, for example, can view a list of all the text and graphics documents, sitting there on an Internet-connected computer somewhere, that make up their web pages. The effect is shown in Figure 21-1.

When they want to update one of ...

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