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FYI - Some people may be interested in the following summary of remote access clients available for secure FTP file servers - i.e. Windows IIS7.5 FTPS server included with Windows 2008 server R2. My apologies to the others who would prefer fewer (and smaller) emails. Laurence Bates _____ From: Laurence Bates [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 12:48 PM To: 'Dave Dai'; 'Charles C Ruggiero'; 'Michelle Roggenbeck'; 'Terri Gustafson'; 'Ken Dirkin' Cc: 'Laurence Bates' Subject: FTPS Client Access to IIS v7.5 I would like your feedback on some options for off-campus file storage access. As you know, I spent some time recently looking at different file servers and clients for remote file access and concluded that Microsoft's IIS7/FTPS offers the greatest degree of reliability, security, economy and convenience on the server side. I have continued to research the FTPS clients that work with IIS7 and it appears that there are a range of good clients for both Mac and Windows users to choose from and even one for the iPad. I especially like Netdrive for Windows, and Transmit for Mac since they mount the remote file server as a drive. On the other hand, 3D-FTP does a nice job of controlling one or two way synchronization and CuteFTP is cheap for academic use. Gladinet's Cloud Desktop Pro provides an insight into where these clients are going and has an impressive list of Cloud services that it can access. I have arranged the clients below in the order that I preferred them but your sense of user requirements may be different. There are costs associated with almost all of them and so at some stage we may need to consider a budget request to cover the cost of obtaining licenses at lower overall costs. You can connect to edfs.educ.msu.edu with your educ id and password. Select FTPES or FTP over explicit TLS/SSL using port 21. You should also select FTP Passive mode since that appears to be the only mode which works from off-campus. FTPS Client Access to IIS v7.5 Windows Clients 1) Macrodata Netdrive - http://www.netdrive.net <http://www.netdrive.net/> - $7 Q100 (academic) - Free for non-commercial, home use. 2) 3D-FTP - http://www.3dftp.com/ - $24.90 Q100 - nice sync function - $3990 Enterprise (MSU) 3) CuteFTP (Pro) - http://www.cuteftp.com <http://www.cuteftp.com/> - $3.00 Academic License 4) Cloudberry Explorer - http:// <http://cloudberrylab.com/> cloudberrylab.com - $39.99 Q1 5) SmartFTP (Pro) - http://www.smartftp.com/ - $29.95 Q100 - Windows 6) Glubtech Secure FTP Client - http://www.glub.com <http://www.glub.com/> - $30 Q1 7) FlashFXP - http://www.flashfxp.com <http://www.flashfxp.com/> - $28.45 Q1 - Only Partial drag and drop from desktop 8) WS FTP Pro - $78 Q2 - Required a reboot after install 9) BitKinex - http://www.bitkinex.com/ - Freeware - Too Slow and Complex 10) FTP Commander Delux - http://www.internet-soft.com <http://www.internet-soft.com/> - $49.95 Q1 - Too BUGGY 11) WISE-FTP - http://www.wise-ftp.com <http://www.wise-ftp.com/> - $20 Q100 - Does not work with IIS7.5 12) Gladinet Cloud Desktop Pro - http://www.gladinet.com <http://www.gladinet.com/> - $19.99 Academic - Neither the free or Pro version work with IIS7.5 Nice list of Cloud services that it works with. 13) ALFTP - http://www.altools.com <http://www.altools.com/> - $6.00 Q100 - Does not work with IIS7.5 14) Null FTP Client - http://www.vwsolutions.com <http://www.vwsolutions.com/> - Does not work with IIS7.5 15) InstantSyncT Secure FTPS/SFTP - http://www.3dftp.com/purchase.htm - Maker of 3D-FTP - $99 16) FTPVoyager (from Serv-U people) - $39.95 Q100 Failed 17) CoffeeCup Direct FTP - https://www.coffeecup.com <https://www.coffeecup.com/> - $12.00 Q 50-249 - 7 Day Trial - VERY BUGGY iPad Clients 1) FTP on the go Pro - $9.99 2) Avatron Air Sharing HD - $9.99 - Does not work with IIS7.5 3) Uploader - $0.99 - Simple file uploader - could not get this to work. Mac OS/X Clients 1) Transmit - http://www.panic.com <http://www.panic.com/> - $23 Q100 - Mounts as a drive - includes sync 2) CutefTP - cuteftp.com - $3.00 Academic License 3) Fetch FTP - fetchsoftworks.com - $18 Q100 4) YummyFTP - Yummysoftware.com - $28 Q1 5) FileZilla - sourceforge.net - free 6) Captain FTP - captainftp.xdsnet.de - $34.01 Q1 thru 99 7) Cyberduck - - cyberduck.ch - Open Source 8) Twin FTP - apps4mac.com - $30 Q100 - Backup Software 9) Flow FTP - extendmac.com - $25 Q1 - Does not work with IIS7.5 10) Classic FTP - nchsoftware.com - $24.99 Q1 - Does not work with IIS7.5 11) CrossFTP Pro - cdrossftp.com - $12.50 Q100 - Requires Java 1.6 - messy install 12) WebDrive - www.fastspring.com <http://www.fastspring.com/> - $18 Q100 - requires MacFuse - double install - Crashed 13) Expandrive - expandrive.com - $35 Q10 - Failed to Connect 14) Interarchy - $16 Q10 - no FTPS ________________________________________________________________ Implicit FTPS versus Explicit FTPS/FTPES Fetch supports using FTP with TLS/SSL (also known as FTPS) to connect securely to servers. When you connect to a server using FTP with TLS/SSL, encryption is used to protect the connection between your Macintosh and the server. This protects your password and optionally your data, preventing an eavesdropper from capturing or stealing them as they travel over the network. TLS stands for "Transport Layer Security," and SSL stands for "Secure Sockets Layer." TLS is a newer version of the SSL protocol. There are three different methods of establishing FTP with TLS/SSL connections; Fetch only supports two of them. The two supported methods are: * "AUTH TLS," also known as "FTPES," "Explicit SSL," or "Explicit FTPS." This is the preferred method according to the RFC that defines FTP with TLS/SSL. * "SSL connect," also known as "Implicit SSL" or "Implicit FTPS." This is an older and no longer encouraged method of establishing FTP with TLS/SSL, but it is still somewhat common. The third method, "AUTH SSL," is also no longer encouraged and is not supported by Fetch. ________________________________________________________________ Please be aware that implicit FTPS and explicit FTPS/FTPES are two different modes of operation for FTPS and, to the best of my knowledge, the implicit mode is deprecated in favor of the explicit mode that is more narrowly referred to as FTPES, versus FTPS that could imply either mode if not verbosely clarified. When configuring the FTP client software, such as FileZilla, please verify to ensure that it is setup to connect using "FTPES - FTP over explicit TLS/SSL". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_FTP_client_software