Other File Transfer Commands
There are other file transfer commands that do not use ssh. FTP is the most classic file transfer protocol and command. Wget and Curl are commands or libraries that use multiple communication protocols to get files, especially from websites.
FTP
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a standard network protocol used to transfer files to and from a remote network. As FTP traffic is not encrypted, it is highly recommended to use SCP or SFTP for a secure data transfer. To use FTP on Linux OS, you can use the ftp
command. The command design is similar to the sftp
command. You can establish an FTP session and use sub-commands to manage a file transfer.
Wget
wget
is a command-line utility used to download web pages that use various internet protocols, including HTTP, HTTPS and FTP. Wget is often used as a web crawler protocol because of its usability for downloading web content.
Its command syntax is simple. By running the wget
command with a URL, you can download the website's HTML file. If you use the -p option,
you can also download all the contents of the website including image files. With the -r option
, you can also download the website recursively (including the links to the website).
cURL
cURL means client for URL. It is a command line tool that enables data transfer over various network protocols including HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and other internet protocols. cURL communicates with a web or application server by specifying a relevant URL and the data that needs to be sent or received. Different from wget
, the curl
command is also used to upload data to a server.