FTP works from CommandLine but not from Windows Explorer

Question

I'm trying to connect from one server to another using FTP. By using command line, everything thing is ok. however when using Windows Explorer to browse to the FTP location i get timeout issue.

I've tried connecting using a .net code, and I got the following exception

The remote server returned an error: 227 Entering Passive Mode (192,168,231,1,4,218).

Answer 1

You probably need to connect using an active connection rather than a passive one. There's a Microsoft Knowledge Base about configuring Internet Explorer at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323446. The command line ftp.exe doesn't support passive transfers, so to make IE match it you would leave "Use Passive FTP" unchecked. For any library you use, look for documentation discussing whether it uses PASV (passive) or PORT (active) to open the data channel.