There are several different ways to FTP files to or from your home computer and your Mosaic account. Click Here to see how to use Internet Explorer's Web Browser Based FTP or Windows' command-line ftp program. You may also choose to download and install a third-party GUI (graphical user interface or "window"-based) FTP program on your home computer. Download.com has numerous free or free-trial programs such as WinSCP or SmartFTP that you can use. Whichever method you select you should connect to ftp.uncc.edu which is our UNIX based ftp server.

The original FTP specification is an inherently insecure method of transferring files because there is no method specified for transferring data in an encrypted fashion. This means that under most network configurations, user names, passwords, FTP commands and transferred files can be "sniffed" or viewed by anyone on the same network using a packet sniffer. This is a problem common to many Internet protocol specifications written prior to the creation of SSL such as HTTP, SMTP and Telnet. The common solution to this problem is to use either SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol), or FTPS (FTP over SSL), which adds SSL or TLS encryption to FTP . Both WinSCP and SmartFTP provide for secure FTP transactions.