Conclusion

This admittedly brief overview of the capabilities of this relatively simple API gives you a small taste of what is possible using RAS. The next chapter will cover TAPI and MAPI; I'll show you some alternative ways of doing the same task we used RAS for. One alternative to using RAS, TAPI, or MAPI for a file transfer is using File Transfer Protocol (FTP), a topic more appropriately covered as a client-side technology. Of course, RAS can even be used to establish a connection that FTP could use to do the actual file transfer.

There are certainly advantages to the other methods of dealing with a file transfer such as this, but RAS can often be a solution when you want to do something remotely that is easy to do on a local area network. Copying files is certainly one examplebut not the only examplein which RAS can be the next best thing to being there.