File Shares
Explore the fundamentals of file shares and transfer protocols including FTP, NFS, SMB, and HDFS. Understand how these protocols are used to share and transfer files across networks and how AWS services like DataSync and Lightsail support these methods. Learn how files are essential for internet communication and gain practical insight into using code to upload and download files from online sources.
Files are foundational objects on the internet. In fact, every website contains code files with instructions on how web browsers should display pages.
Using FTP to transfer files
In the earlier days of the web, it was common to upload HyperText Markup Language (HTML) files to web-hosting servers through the use of FTP and SFTP. FTP is one of the earliest communication protocols for sending files across networks and was initially introduced in 1971.
Let’s jump into an example code file that displays a “Hello World” page:
If a web server supports uploads through FTP, a developer could upload the file index.html using software such as FileZilla or CuteFTP and make it the default page shown to website visitors.
While FTP is no longer used frequently, a few AWS services, such as Amazon Lightsail, still support transferring files via this method. For example, it’s possible to set up an instance on Amazon Lightsail and to transfer files to the instance using FileZilla (among other methods).
It’s also possible to write code to upload and download files via FTP. The Python library pysftp is helpful if such use cases are required.
File sharing protocols
The terms file transfer and file share sound very ...