NEW to ftp

greets..

this is what i want to do... i want to be able to share files with a few friends without having to be at my PC we want to be able to connect to each other share i was told the best way is to use a ftp this is proving to be a huge challenge an Ive spent many hours trying to do/understand it. everywhere someone one wants me to pay/use their services there must be a free way of doing what i want ... like just click on an icon an i see what they have in a particular folder with out interfering with what they are doing on their PC I'm not sure if this is even possible or if i even have the right forum I'm very frustrated3ed at the moment LOL any help in the right direction would be much appreciated thank you for your time in helping a pctard

What OS are you running?

FTP would allow someone to connect to you from their location and download or upload files (depending on how the server is setup), but if you want to download from someone in addition to them downloading from you, you would both need an FTP server set up. FTP would allow connections to a designated folder (or folders) on the server.

Im using fedora 12 one is using Windows XP one is Using Vista an i tried using ftp an that was hard to understan and then i tried using the "easyest one" so it said an i was also lost ....

What server were you trying to install? For Fedora, vsftp is extremely easy to setup and use.

Also, if anyone is behind a firewall or router, they need to make sure that the appropriate port(s) is/are opened/forwarded.

You can also try Orb. I know this works very well for streaming and such, but I'm pretty sure it can be used to download files as well. (Although the downloading would be for one file at a time).

You can setup and FTP server somewhere with a single username/password that is shared among all the intended users. Most services will ask you to pay since this requires storing your data on their hardware.