wow this is alot to read. Let me get to this first thing tomorrow morning.

thankx for the post

"Alun Jones [MSFT]" <alunj@online.microsoft.com>
|>The usual cause of timeouts while trying to start transferring file listings
|>would be a NAT that isn't correctly doing NAT on FTP control traffic.
|>
|>FTP sets up data connections in one of two modes - active or passive. The
|>choice of which mode is left up to the client. Many FTP clients use passive
|>mode for the simple reason that the server administrator has to fix any NAT
|>issues, and if he's already fixed it for one client, it'll work for all the
|>other clients.
|>
|>Some FTP clients use active mode, because that's what the FTP standard was
|>originally documented to use as the default.
|>
|>It's often easier, when solving these kinds of problems, to drop down to a
|>simpler client with fewer bells-and-whistles to hide the true cause of
|>problems. I like the command-line FTP client in Windows for this reason.
|>
|>Open up a command prompt, and type "ftp". Hit return, and you'll see the
|>prompt change to "ftp>". You are now in the command-line FTP client.
|>First, connect to your FTP site, by entering "open yoursite.example.com" -
|>replacing, of course, "yoursite.example.com" with the name or address of
|>your site.
|>
|>You'll be prompted for your user name and password - enter those, and when
|>the prompt comes back, you're connected. Unlike graphical FTP clients,
|>you'll notice that this one doesn't automatically do a file listing.
|>
|>Now, let's turn on debugging, so you can see the commands your client is
|>sending to your server - note, these are often different from the commands
|>you type into the client. To turn on debugging, you enter the command
|>"debug". Now, to do a directory listing, enter "dir". You'll see the
|>client sends a PORT command, and then a LIST command. This is because the
|>command-line FTP client uses active mode for its FTP transfers. If it used
|>passive mode, you'd see a PASV command instead of the PORT command.
|>
|>Did the listing work? If so, then your problem is with passive mode, and is
|>something that needs to be fixed in the NAT at your server's end. If the
|>listing went the same way as your other attempts to connect, then your
|>problem is with active mode, and needs to be fixed in the NAT at your
|>client's end. Sometimes it's as simple as installing a new firmware
|>update - sometimes it's something that you can't get the NAT vendor to fix.
|>If that's the case, then you will need to tell the clients that are having
|>problems to get configured for the other transfer mode.
|>
|>Alun.
|>~~~~

that may be true, but let me restate this if was not apparent from my first post.
I need a ftp site for the simplest of users. I say to user over the phone go to my ftp site,
its ftp.domainname.com download the file, thats it. What client are they going to use?
Chances are its the client thats already installed on their computer. IE. Are they going to configure IE, no.
So I need my server to work with the default IE configuration that is the setup for the majority of computers.

Right now I can access the server with smartftp using port mode, so I know its partitally working.

My questions are only how to get it to work with the default as it ships with windows configuration of IE.

Most people don't even know what a FTP site is, let alone how to configure their IE to work in port mode.

not trying to be a smartass, just trying to explain my problem.

I have a 2003 server working just fine, so I'm trying to figure out why 2000 works different then 2003
or maybe its a linksys home router vs a sonicwall firewall? I don't know. All I know in this case its not
an option for the issue to be a client issue.


jeff.nospam@zina.com (Jeff Cochran)
|>Specifically, your problem is with the client. Since some clients
|>work and others don't, it's a client issue.
|>
|>Have you tested the IE change I posted to see if it fixes the IE
|>issue? It may be your firewall, or the client's has a problem with
|>the ports as well.

[quoted text, click to view]

There is a definite difference between the firewalls, as well as there
could be a configuration difference. The Linksys units do a poor job
of FTP through NAT, and there are issue such as Alun describes. I've
only gotten FTP to work through them by choosing Passive Mode on the
client side. I haven't tried recent Linksys units with FTP, but from
the posts I see this is still probably true.

Unfortunately, this requires a client to be configured for Passive
Mode, and I don't know a way around that.