secure upload

Hi, folks.
I've heard your service is great and your plans certainly look good so I'm really interested in signing up. The one concern I have is that you don't appear to offer SFTP. Is that true? Is there any way to have it added to an account? I'm not a big fan of having my passwords out in the open so I'd even be willing to pay an extra few dollars a month just to have that feature.

Thanks.
Sam

[GatorJeff]

Hello,
SFTP is allowed on any server, if you have SSH. You would need to request ssh access to be able to use secure transfer protocols. You would need to fill out this form after signup https://secure.hostgator.com/sshrequest.php We recommend winscp to securely transfer data. It is more effecient than using sftp with an ftp program.

[RainbowViper]

GatorJeff,

Can you expand a bit on winscp being more efficient than, say, Filezilla using SFTP? To what degree is that so?

Thank you.

[GatorJoshL]

RainbowViper,
The SCP protocol, which runs on port 22, is similar to the BSD rcp protocol, however unlike rcp, data is encrypted during transfer, to avoid potential packet sniffers extracting usable information from the data packets. The protocol itself does not provide authentication and security; it relies on the underlying protocol, SSH, to provide these features.
For upload, the client feeds the server with files to be uploaded, optionally including their basic attributes (permissions, timestamps). This is an advantage over the common FTP protocol, which does not have provision for uploads to include the original date/timestamp attribute.

For downloads, the client sends a request for files or directories to be downloaded. When downloading a directory, the server feeds the client with its subdirectories and files. Thus the download is server-driven, which imposes a security risk when connected to a malicious server.

For most applications, the SCP protocol is superseded by the more comprehensive SFTP protocol, which is also based on SSH.

[RainbowViper]

Thanks, JoshL!!

[GatorJoshL]

No problem, If you need anything further just email support or make a post.

Have a good one.

Josh Loe

[atomicthumbs]

One big bonus: with SFTP, compression can be enabled for faster transfers of large amounts of compressible data (text, etc.).

[bejostobbo]

How to convert Private SSH Key to ppk format?