Chapter 9: Creating and Configuring FTP Sites

IIS 6 is more than just a platform for hosting websites and applications—it can also be used as an FTP server to provide users with a place to upload and download their files across a corporate intranet or over the Internet. In this chapter, we’ll look at how to create and configure FTP sites and cover the new features of FTP in IIS 6.

Installing the FTP Service

Before you can use IIS as an FTP server, you first have to install the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Service component of IIS because it is not included in a default installation of IIS 6. Installing the FTP Service is simple: open Control Panel and select Add/Remove Programs, choose Add/Remove Windows Components, select Application Server, click Details, select Internet Information Services (IIS), choose File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Service, and click OK. You may be prompted for the Windows Server 2003 installation files, so have your product CD-ROM or installation distribution point handy.

Tip 

Make sure to perform the preceding steps when your IIS machine is not under use because users may lose connections to websites running on IIS while the FTP Service is being installed. If you have IIS Manager running when you install FTP, the console will lose its connection to the server and you’ll have to reconnect or reopen the console to begin managing your FTP sites.

FTP Features in IIS 6

Before you start working with FTP Service, you should know about the changes and improvements to it in IIS 6:

• FTP User Isolation This is new to IIS 6 and is a way of setting up FTP for large service providers like ISPs and ASPs. It allows users to use FTP to upload content to home directories on an IIS 6 FTP server. Each user’s home directory is actually a subdirectory of a single FTP site running on the server, but the nice thing is that to each user, their home directory behaves as if it’s the root or top-level directory of the FTP server. This way, users cannot go higher in the directory tree than their home directory, and therefore cannot view or modify content in each other’s home directories. We’ll look at how to implement this feature later in this chapter in the section entitled “Using FTP User Isolation.”

• Server-to-Server FTP Transfer This advanced feature lets a user transfer files between two remote FTP servers. It’s been around since IIS 4 but is configured differently now, and we’ll look at how to perform this later in this chapter in the section entitled “Using Server-to-Server FTP Transfer.”

• FTP Restart This feature is new to IIS 6 and allows users to resume interrupted file transfers without having to start over from the beginning. It’s an especially useful feature for sites where the files being transferred are large, such as medical images or multimedia files. For this to work, however, the FTP client used must support this feature, and unfortunately the Windows command-line FTP client doesn’t support FTP Restart.

• Active/Passive FTP connections IIS 6 supports both types of RCF-compliant FTP connection modes: Active (also called Standard or PORT) and Passive (or PASV). This flexibility helps you perform file transfers through firewalls and proxy servers, provided you configure their port settings correctly. As far as Microsoft FTP clients are concerned, the command-line version of FTP supports only active transfers, while Internet Explorer version 5.5 or later supports both modes (earlier versions of IE support only passive transfers). You can change the FTP connection mode in IE by selecting Tools | Internet Options, clicking Advanced, and selecting the Enable Folder View for FTP Sites check box to configure IE to operate as a standard mode FTP client. To switch to passive mode, clear the Enable Folder View for FTP Sites check box and select the Use Passive FTP check box.