FTP, SFTP, and TFTP

A network service that’s commonly used in organization is a file transfer service

FTP. It’s a legacy way to transfer files from one computer to another over the Internet, and it’s still in use today. It’s not a super secure way to transfer data because it doesn’t handle data encryption. The FTP service works much like our SSH service. Clients that want to access an FTP server have to install an FTP client. On the FTP server, we install the software that allows us to share information located in a directory on that server. FTP is primarily used today to share web content.

SFTP is a secure version of FTP, so it makes sense to choose this option over FTP. During this SFTP process, data is sent through SSH and is encrypted. TFTP stands for trivial FTP. Is a simpler way to transfer files than using FTP. TFTP doesn’t require user authentication like FTP, so any files that you store here should be generic and not need to be secure.

A popular use of TFTP is to host installation files. One method of booting a computer that we haven’t discussed yet is PXE or pixie boot, which stands for pre boot execution. This allows you to boot into a software that’s available over the network. A common use case for organization that wants to install software over a network is to keep operating system installation files, but TFTP server. That way, when you perform a network boot, you can be automatically launched into the installer