It does not matter where the computers are located, how they are connected, or whether they use the same operating system. FTP was responsible for the development of many database services along the growth of the Internet. From the beginning, information was stored in databases which covered every imaginal subject from legal opinions to recipes to public software on public server computers which could be accessed by users. Some FTP servers required a password to gain access, while other servers were truly public and were accessed anonymously . FTP servers remain in the Internet in great numbers.
Data stored in their archives is rich in content and vast in quantity.
FTP works seamlessly from within our browsers, but more on that later. FTP has always been a complex program because there are different ways to handle the files and file structures in the various FTP archives. This was and is especially true when used from the command line. In the beginning, it was used from the UNIX command line and had to handle different ways of archived files. And, some files were compressed, while others were not.