Chapter 6. Customizing the FTP Service

File transfer protocol (ftp) has been a required protocol of the TCP/IP Protocol stack since 1973. Microsoft first offered an FTP Server Service as a simple, limited implementation in Windows NT 3.5. When Microsoft released Internet Information Server 1 in 1995, the implementation was greatly enhanced but still lacked several key features that were needed for a truly complete implementation. In Internet Information Server 4, Microsoft made significant advances that finally allowed it to support the features that would enable an Internet hosting provider to efficiently commercialize its FTP services. Although Internet Information Services 5 adds few additional advances, this version of the FTP service is a comprehensive solution for almost all FTP scenarios.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• A brief review of FTP architecture

• Specific options configured on the FTP Site tab

• The three types of security accounts that can access an FTP site

• Specific options configured on the Home Directory tab

• A discussion of FTP virtual directories

• A step-by-step setup of an FTP site