Fetch Help > Concepts > FTP

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and is a set of ground rules (a "protocol") that allows two computers to exchange files over a network. FTP was developed in the 1970s by users of the Advanced Research Projects Agency network, or Arpanet. FTP is one of the oldest official file transfer mechanisms of the Internet (Arpanet's larger successor) and therefore is supported by millions of computers.

Fetch implements one part of FTP, the "client" side. Therefore, it can communicate with any Internet-connected computer that has a "server" program. Some of Fetch's features may not be available on certain servers — this is because the server does not support the feature (for example, not all servers have subfolders) or because the server does not implement the complete FTP specification.