FTP is one of the many three-letter acronyms you are likely to come across in everyday computing life. It stands for file transfer protocol, and is a fairly geeky term that describes the technology used for copying a file from one computer to another via the internet. Using FTP software, you can upload a file to another computer, then download that file to another machine.

If you've not come across the term FTP before, your first reaction might be: 'But that's what email is for!' And you'd be correct. Email is widely used to transfer files between people. FTP doesn't duplicate this function; it offers an entirely different set of functions.

Anyone who manages a website will probably use an FTP server to upload files from their local PC to the machine that holds and provides user access to the website. They might use dedicated software for this task or, as we demonstrate in our walkthrough, perform the transfer through a browser.

I frequently used FTP when I was writing . Rather than email across completed text and images, I uploaded them directly to the publisher's computer system using FTP. This made it easy for several people to access the files at once.

FTP can be useful if an ISP or email client restricts the size of files that can be transferred. A client of mine has a 10MB limit on individual emails, for example, so I use when I need to send larger files. Dropbox isn't an FTP server or an email client, but it's a great alternative for sharing files. Another great alternative is .