How to access FTP between computers on WLAN?

On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 09:08:59 -0800, Bob Harris wrote (in article ):

DSL "modem"---AirPort AP~~~~Mac PowerBook (Mac OS X) | ~~~~Dell Laptop (Win XP Pro)

( - = cable, ~ = wireless )

No hardwired computers. Only wireless.

Want to access Mac's FTP server (set up in Sharing Preferences) from the PC laptop.

You should just be able to plug in the internal IP Address of the Mac (10.10.?.?) into your PC FTP client.

Steve

On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 10:17:12 -0800, Walter Roberson wrote (in article ):

Yes, that is what I wanted to know.

Thanks to all for the good advice.

I think we need pictures.

The WLAN generally means the port that is connected to the internet via your ISP. It also generally means that the devices on the LAN side of the router are using non-routing IP addresses.

In a home situation, the typical setup if

dialup Modem or DSL modem or Cable modem to ISP and internet | | WLAN Port Home Router maybe with WiFi (802.11b/g) /// WiFi laptop(s) or computer(s) LAN Port(s) Optional Printer port -> printer | |___ Computer | |___ Computer | |___ Network capable printer

The only time the WLAN port is just another LAN port is if the router has disabled DHCP and NAT services.

Now in this environment, then ftp can be done between computers at home, just use the 10.0.1.* or 192.168.*.* type addresses that are assigned to the home computers by the home router's DHCP service. The Mac OS TCP/IP Control Panel, or the Mac OS X Network System Preferences will tell you the IP address assigned to your Mac by the Router's DHCP service.

Classic Mac OS does not have an ftp server or ftp client, but they can be obtained

would be good place to look for these). Mac OS X ftp server is enabled via the Sharing System Preferences, and there are command line ftp commands as part of Mac OS X, and you can get GUI ftp clients for Mac OS X is a good place to look for those).

Oh yea, most browsers can be FTP clients by using the syntax ftp://server.mumble.com/path/to/file/to/download

If you are trying to do ftp from the Mac across the router to a system on the internet, that should just work.

If you are trying to access your Mac on the LAN side of a home router from outside your home, then you need to tell the router to forward the ftp port(s) to your Mac. Your Macs DHCP assigned IP address will not be directly visible via the internet. Use

to find out the IP address assigned to your router by your ISP.

Now if you have some computers on the LAN side of a home router and some computers on the WLAN side of a home router and the home router is still performing routing services (it has not been turned into a bridge), then you can not easily access non-routing home IP addresses (10.*.*.* or

192.168.*.* type addresses are non-routing).

Basically we need to know what your configuration looks like before we can accurately answer your question.

Bob Harris

In article , DaveC wrote: :WLAN consists of 2 laptops: 1 Mac, 1 Dell (WIn XP Pro) served by AirPort :(snow) AP. Mac has FTP mode where others can log in.

:Is access between computers possible via the AP? Or must I enable the :"peer-to-peer" mode in the wireless configurations for each computer?

You definitely don't need peer to peer for your purposes. You probably don't want (in a technical sense) to use peer-to-peer for what you are doing.

By default the Airport base station uses 10.0.1.* addresses. It should have assigned something like 10.0.1.2 and 10.0.1.3 to your Mac and Dell laptops.

Look in the Mac OS X Network System Preferences, Airport, TCP/IP tab to get the IP address assigned to the Mac.

On the PC side, use that address as the host name. You use your username and password as the ftp login, or if you have more than one account on your Mac, you can use one of them.

If you want anonymous ftp, then you need to do research on that. I went though several books in the book store, and some google searches to figure out how to do anonymous ftp. I ended up installing Pure-FTP, but there are other options. "Mac OS X Unleashed" is one of the books I remember looking at to figure out how to setup anonymous ftp. But in my case it was for a work Mac that I wanted to setup to share files with others inside of work. At home logging into a user account is more than good enough.

You do know you can also enable Windows sharing in the Sharing System Preferences, and setup an SMB server (Samba) for the Dell system to connect to.

Bob Harris

I forgot to mention, Mac OS X can also connect to Shares you setup on the Dell, you can browse the SMB servers on the network, or you can explicitly connect to a server using

Finder -> Go menu -> Connect to Server... smb://nn.nn.nn.nn/username

Bob Harris

Er, no, thats the WAN port, without the ell in there....

In my (very limited) experiments, I found that OS X's built-in FTP server didn't work with passive FTP. I had to disable passive in the GUI clients I tried (Transmit and Interarchy) before a directory listing from the server Mac would show up on the client. Perhaps a glitch in the OS X firewall?

The OP is probably be better off using the built-in AFP and SMB file sharing, as they are more secure than OS X's built-in FTP server. This has been discussed in recent threads in comp.sys.mac.system.

Before the advent of wireless networking, I suppose they might have used WLAN for this. The ISP port of a broadband router is normally connected to an Ethernet segment that connects to the cable/DSL modem, so in that sense it's a LAN, and they might have used the notation WLAN to mean Wide-area LAN.

But he also mentioned AP, the abbreviation for Access Point, which is a wireless term. That reinforces the idea that he's referring to a Wireless LAN, which is what WLAN usually means these days.

I've seen both WLAN and WAN for the port that is suppose to talk to the internet. I think it was on a D-Link that I last saw WLAN, but that was also my first Cable/DSL router, so that might explain whey it sticks.

Also the Original Post used the term WLAN, so with that reinforcement, I just went happily on my way using the term WLAN in my replies.

But you are correct, Apple's Airport Admin Utility uses the notation WAN. I'll try to do better next time :-)

Bob Harris

It's the LAN that connects to the WAN.

I'm not saying that they did -- I didn't use any of the early broadband routers, and I'm just taking the previous poster's word that he saw this label on the ISP port of some routers.

Have you been reading the thread? There was an earlier poster who claimed to have seen routers that had the ISP port labeled "WLAN", rather than "WAN" as is now common. We're trying to figure out why they did that. As I said in my previous post, I'm guessing it predated wireless LANs and the current use of that abbreviation.

If you say so, I'm sure they did. It does seem like a curious contradiction of terms though - a wide-area local-area network.

Beverly

Not wide-area local-area network. Wireless local-area network.

Thank you for following the thread.

Beverly

No, actually, "I" said it. Me! Me Me Me. But you can't trust my memory, it goes back to punched papertape, and there may be a few stuck chads :-)

Bob Harris

Trust b*oody dlink to use the wrong acronyms... :-)

You should go electronic. Then you could program yourself to always give a slight bias to the right, and avoid such distressing incidents....