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File Sharing Protocols

This content covers the key protocols used for sharing and transmitting files across networks, including HTTP/HTTPS, FTP and its variants, NFS, and SMB/CIFS. Each protocol is examined in terms of its practical use cases, port assignments, and relative security.

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About this video

File sharing and transmission across networks depends on a range of protocols, each designed for specific contexts and carrying different security implications. HTTP and HTTPS, while primarily associated with web browsing, are also the backbone of major cloud file-sharing services such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox — making them the most commonly encountered file transmission protocols on the modern internet. Understanding them in this broader context helps clarify why web-based protocols are foundational knowledge for any networking or security professional. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) uses TCP port 21 for control and port 20 for data transfer, and while it remains functional for tasks like uploading website files or migrating data between systems, it transmits credentials and data in plaintext, making it inherently insecure. More secure alternatives include SFTP, which wraps FTP functionality over an SSH tunnel, and FTPS, which applies TLS encryption to FTP sessions. TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) is a lightweight, connectionless variant with narrow but practical applications, most notably in network device administration and firmware transfers for equipment such as Cisco routers and switches. For local network file sharing, the choice of protocol typically follows the operating system environment. NFS (Network File System) is the standard on Linux-based systems and is widely used in virtualization scenarios where NAS storage volumes need to be shared across a server infrastructure. SMB (Server Message Block), which supersedes the older CIFS standard, is the protocol of choice on Windows networks, enabling the sharing of files, folders, and printers with fine-grained permission controls. Linux systems that need to interoperate with Windows environments can do so through Samba, an open-source implementation of the SMB protocol. Together, these protocols cover the full spectrum of file sharing needs across enterprise and mixed-platform environments.

What you'll learn

What's covered

File Sharing Protocols

Aligned to

CompTIA Network+
1.4 Explain common networking ports, protocols, services, and traffic types.
CompTIA A+ Core 1
2.1 Compare and contrast Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) ports, protocols, and their purposes.
Cisco CCNA
4.9 Describe the capabilities and functions of TFTP/FTP in the network.
Cisco CCST Networking
1.5 Describe common network applications and protocols.

Key terms

File Transfer Protocol
FTP
A standard network protocol used to transfer files between a client and a server over a TCP network.
Trivial File Transfer Protocol
TFTP
A simplified file transfer protocol that uses UDP and provides no authentication, directory browsing, or error recovery, making it fast and lightweight. TFTP is commonly used to transfer configuration files, IOS images, and boot files to and from network devices in controlled environments.
Secure Shell
SSH
A cryptographic network protocol that provides secure remote login and command execution over an unsecured network.
Transport Layer Security
TLS
A cryptographic protocol that provides secure communication over a network, successor to SSL.
Secure Sockets Layer
SSL
A now-deprecated cryptographic protocol designed to provide secure communication over a network, replaced by TLS.
Encryption
The process of converting readable data into an unreadable format using an algorithm and key to prevent unauthorized access.
SSH File Transfer Protocol
SFTP
A secure file transfer protocol that uses SSH to encrypt both commands and data, providing authenticated and encrypted file transfer over a network.
FTP Secure
FTPS
An extension of FTP that adds support for TLS encryption to secure file transfers between a client and server.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTP
An application-layer protocol that defines how web browsers and servers communicate to request and deliver web pages and other content, operating over TCP on port 80. HTTP transmits data in plaintext, which is why it has been largely replaced by HTTPS for sensitive content.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
HTTPS
The encrypted version of HTTP that wraps web traffic in a TLS session, operating on TCP port 443, so that the data exchanged between a browser and a web server is confidential and cannot be read or modified by an eavesdropper. HTTPS is now the standard for all web traffic, indicated by the padlock icon in a browser.
Network File System
NFS
A distributed file system protocol that allows a client to access files over a network as if they were stored locally, commonly used in Unix/Linux environments. NFS enables centralized file storage and sharing across multiple systems.
Server Message Block
SMB
A network protocol primarily used on Windows systems for sharing files, printers, and other resources across a network.

Transcript

Some of the last protocols to go over are some protocols used for sharing and transmitting files: HTTP and HTTPS, FTP, TFTP, SFTP and FTPS, and NFS and SMB/CIFS, which is server message block.

HTTP And HTTPS

I am actually including HTTP and HTTPS first up because, if you think about it, that is exactly what we are doing when we go to a browser: that page is being sent to my computer. So it is sharing an HTML file to my computer and then presenting it as a web page. So I included HTTP and HTTPS as an example of file sharing. Maybe stretching it a little bit there.

But the other thing that I want to drive home too is that there are a lot of web services out there, a lot of services that actually do file sharing. Whether it is Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive or Dropbox, there are a lot of services out there that share files, and they use HTTP and HTTPS as a way to transmit that file and share those files.

FTP

Next up we have file transfer protocol. Not near as common as HTTP and HTTPS, but file transfer protocol is something that we use to share data and send it. I use this a lot when it comes to things like, if you have got one system that needs to upload data into another system, then you will upload it to an FTP server and then get it transferred to that server to get it into the other system. So I do this a lot of times when you are transferring data from one system to another. Or another thing is, let us say you have a website that you are getting up and going. Then perhaps what you do to get the HTML files up to the directories that they need to get into is you use FTP to upload that data.

What it will do is make a connection and establish a TCP connection on port 21, but it will actually use port 20 to do the file transfer and get things uploaded via port 20. So 21 is more of the control, versus 20 is the stream of data that is happening.

Getting back to our URI discussion, you will see that we are using a protocol, FTP. We can send a username and password with this as we are sending it over, although I would not recommend it, because FTP in general is not secure. We will talk about some ways that we can secure it, but I typically do not put the password in the transfer. Then we see that the domain is next, so we have got the domain that we are trying to connect to, and then the port that it exists on, so what port we are connecting to. Usually it is port 21. And then the path of whatever directory we are trying to access on the other side, so that way we can upload files directly to that directory. So this is the syntax for connecting to an FTP server.

TFTP, SFTP And FTPS

There are some variations to it, such as TFTP, trivial file transfer protocol. There is SFTP, which is SSH FTP, so essentially it is FTP but it uses SSH to transfer those files. And there is FTPS, which is FTP secure, or FTP over SSL, although once again we really do not use SSL. It is not considered secure anymore, so we use other protocols such as TLS. But we have FTPS.

I would say I do not see this one all that often. I have only used TFTP when I am doing some admin stuff and I have got certain servers or Cisco equipment that need to use TFTP. This is the one that is most common that I use the most, way beyond FTP. I try not to use FTP, once again, because it is just insecure. So we should try to avoid using FTP and opt for a more secure method.

NFS

So now we have network file system. NFS is more associated with things like Linux, and it is a way to share out files and directories with NFS. Where I have most commonly used this is for things like virtualization, where I have some sort of NAS storage and I can use NFS to share out volumes to my infrastructure. So that way I can share out different volumes, and then different servers can have access to those volumes and it can store virtual machines on it. So it is pretty powerful. There are a lot of cool features in NFS, and it is used more on Linux machines, and I have used it with things like virtualization.

SMB And CIFS

Although if you are more on Windows and use Windows more, then you are probably going to gravitate away from NFS and use more SMB or CIFS. SMB is server message block. CIFS is actually an older version, or one of the versions, of SMB. So really, you may see CIFS out there, referenced as CIFS, but really it is server message block that is used nowadays.

It is a way for Windows machines, not always Windows machines, but Windows machines, to share out things like files and folders or printers or other objects. So SMB is a way to share out the resources on a Windows network.

Now, if this happened to be something like a Linux box and you wanted to share to Windows machines, then you could set up a service like Samba, and set up Samba to share out files and folders on it.

I really like SMB because it has got a lot of permissions and a lot of granularity when it comes to controlling access. So I really love how much control it gives you on access to these different files and resources.

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